Gloucestershire, 1608 · found 14 September 2026

The muster of 1608

Eleven men of this surname, counted by the Crown two centuries before the archive's earliest register entry — and one of them living in the hamlet the name came from.

In 1608 the Crown counted every man in Gloucestershire fit to bear arms, parish by parish, with his trade, his age to the nearest decade and his height judged by the weapon he could carry. Eleven men of this surname are in it. One of them was living in the hamlet the surname came from.

John Smyth of Nibley

What the survey is

John Smyth of Nibley (1567–1641), steward of the Berkeley estates, compiled the muster for Gloucestershire in 1608. It lists, under hundreds, manors and tithings, the name and occupation of each man capable of bearing arms. Sir John Maclean printed it in 1902; a facsimile followed in 1980. The searchable transcript used here was built from the 1902 edition. documented

Searched at coaley.net/glos1608, the online transcript of Smyth's survey, on 14 September 2026.

Read it the way he wrote it

Smyth's own key

The codes are Smyth's, not the transcriber's. His explanations, quoted:

A20	“shows the age of that man to be about Twenty.”
A40	“shows the age of that man to be about Forty.”
A60	“shows the age of that man to be between Fifty and sixty.”
tallest stature	“fit to make a pikeman.”
middle stature	“fit to make a musketeer.”
lower stature	“fit to serve with a caliver.”
meanest stature	“either fit for a pyoner or of little other use.”
trained	“at the time of taking this view, he was then a trained soldier.”
subsidy man	“the said man was then a subsidy man.”

The survey

Eleven men, three spellings

Name	Trade	Tithing	Age	Stature
John Saniger	labourer	Halmore [Berkeley]	A20	lower stature
Richard Saniger	fuller	Wotton-under-Edge	A40	lower stature
John Saniger	weaver	Woodmancote [in Dursley parish]	A40	lower stature
Thomas Saniger	weaver	Paganhill [Stroud]	A40	lower stature
Richard Saniger	labourer	Alkerton [Stonehouse]	A40	middle stature
John Sanyger	weaver	Hinton [Berkeley]	A40	lower stature
William Sanyger	servant to George Lewis	Hinton [Berkeley]	A20	lower stature
Thomas Sanyger	weaver	Dursley	A40	meanest stature
William Syniger	tailor	Kings Stanley (Borough) [Stonehouse]	—	trained
Thomas Syniger	weaver	Oxlynch [Stonehouse]	A40	lower stature
John Saniger	weaver	Saniger [in Hinton parish, Berkeley]	A40	lower stature

Every line above is the transcript's own wording. documented

Saniger, in Hinton parish

A man of the name, in the place of the name

The survey lists the hamlet itself as a tithing: “Saniger [in Hinton parish, Berkeley]”, with eight men in it. The seventh is JOHN SAINGER, weaver, A40, lower stature. In 1608 a man called Sainger was living in a hamlet called Saniger. documented

This archive already argued, from deeds, that the surname is a worn-down SWANHANGER and that it came off the place. This is the first record it holds that shows the two together in one line: the place named, and a man of the name resident in it.

Two more stand in the same parish: JOHN SANYGER, weaver, and WILLIAM SANYGER, servant to George Lewis, both at Hinton [Berkeley] — the parish that contains the hamlet.

And what is not claimed. It does not make him anyone's ancestor. No record here links any of these eleven men to Hannah Saniger, born about 1804, and none is claimed. What the survey gives is the surname's home ground and its trades, two centuries before this archive's earliest register entry. context, not descent

The place, and the deeds behind it →

Chronology

What the spellings date

In 1608 the surname exists in three forms, and every one of them ends -GER: SANIGER, SANYGER, SYNIGER. A fourth, SAINGER, stood here until 15 September 2026 and turns out to belong to the printer rather than to 1608.

The forms that dominate this archive's own parish registers two centuries later — SINNEGAR (92 entries), SANIGAR (74), SINEGAR (60) — appear nowhere in 1608. The -GAR ending is a later development, not an older one. Two of the 1608 forms, SANYGER and SYNIGER, are not among the seventeen spellings this archive had collected. documented

Tested, not assumed. Every surname in the county ending -gar (112 men), -gear (0), -ger (200), -gor (31) and -gre (198) was listed and read. The only S-initial forms of this name are the four above; Seagar, Seager, Sellinger, Seveger, Stranger and Stringer are other families, and the single SINGER — Anthony Singer, servant, at Coln St Aldwyns near Cirencester — is forty miles from the Berkeley Vale and is not counted here.

Occupation

They were cloth workers

Six of the eleven are weavers. Add the fuller at Wotton-under-Edge and the tailor at Kings Stanley and eight of eleven are in cloth or clothing. The places say the same thing: Dursley, Stroud, Stonehouse, Kings Stanley and Wotton-under-Edge are the broadcloth district.

This archive's own 556 later Saniger records put WEAVER second among stated occupations, behind blacksmith. The trade holds across two hundred years and the same twelve miles of country. the continuity is inferred from two separate counts

The 556 later records →

Method

Two ways this search could have lied

The trailing wildcard returns nothing	Searching Sanige* gives no matches, while Saniger gives five. A wildcard at the END of a term silently matches nothing; one at the START works (niger = 7). Anyone trusting San would record a null for a surname that is plainly there.
A single hit is spelled out in words	One match is reported as “There is one match”, not “1 match”. A reader — or a script — looking for a digit sees nothing and files a zero. This is how JOHN SAINGER, the one man living in the hamlet itself, was missed on the first pass of this very search and recovered only on the second.

Both were caught by control tests, and both are recorded here because the miss, not the find, is the transferable part. method

Gloucestershire Notes & Queries

One of the four spellings was a printer's error, and a reviewer said so in 1902

This page was built from Sir John Maclean's 1902 edition of Smyth's muster, and said so. Gloucestershire Notes & Queries reviewed that edition as it came out, and the reviewer went through its misreadings.

The book is handsomely printed and nicely got up, but is occasionally marred by errors which the editor, whose name is not indicated, ought not to have passed. Thus SAINGER SHOULD READ SANIGER, and probably seiuger is seivyer; the grotesque Grisseote Cliste should be Greffeote Clifte; Cidolls is probably a blunder for Eidolls; Jugley is probably Ingley; Poutinge is doubtless Pontinge; Slinchcombe should be Stinchcombe; and Stimbridge, Slimbridge. documented

Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, reviewing Men and Armour for Gloucestershire in 1608 — a review that also records that «only 125 have been printed»

So the eleventh man, the one living in the hamlet the surname came from, is JOHN SANIGER OF SANIGER — his name and his address the same word. The muster holds three spellings in 1608, not four. The reviewer is correcting the same edition this archive read, on the same name, for the same reason: the printed text and the manuscript differ.

And what this does NOT overturn. SAINGER is a real form of the surname — it simply is not a 1608 one. The Berkeley registers carry 44 Sainger entries, Agnies Sainger was buried at Berkeley St Mary in 1655 and Agnis Sainger married John Winstone there. What has been corrected is one line of one printed edition, not the existence of the spelling.

This is correction 31 →

What this changes

The surname is documented in Gloucestershire in 1608. Two hundred years before this archive's earliest parish-register entry, in the same twelve miles of country.
A man of the name lived in the hamlet of the name. John Sainger, weaver, at Saniger in Hinton parish, Berkeley. The toponymic argument now has a person standing in it.
The -GAR spellings are late. Every 1608 form ends -GER. The commonest later spellings did not yet exist.
Two spellings were unknown here. SANYGER and SYNIGER were not among the seventeen this archive had collected, and three of the eleven men carry them.
None of it is a line. Eleven documented men, and not one link to Hannah Saniger. The gap between 1608 and 1804 is unbridged and is not bridged here.

Still open. The 1608 survey names men, not parents. Bridging it to the archive's registers needs Berkeley and Hinton wills and the manor court rolls for Hinton — GCR/231 and 258 are already on the errand queue, and the eleven names above are what to look for in them.

The hamlet → · The surname in the registers → · Hannah Saniger → · What to look for next →