These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.
Analysis
What would move the numbers: five named records and three levers
The estimate moves on named, extant records rather than on further argument, and each lever is attached to a specific row. A Norwich marriage licence bond showing a Francis Gurney first wife between 1606 and 1611 would raise Candidate B sharply. The 1626 will of Richard Gurney of Cheddington, if it names a son John living at that date, would raise that row sharply — a will naming children is the one document that turns a predicted household into a documented one. The Great Berkhamsted burial register entry for 28 June 1638 would drop C(ii) to near zero if it reads 'son of John' and restore what he lost if it reads 'son of Thomas'. Proof that the East Dereham household belongs to a different Francis would push Candidate B down toward the record-state rows. And opening the south-Midlands archdeaconry licence series, the Norwich licence bonds of 1606-11 and the Buckinghamshire archdeaconry wills to no result would lower the not-yet-searched row, since that row is largely made of them. Three instruments carry most of the remaining value: Norfolk parish and probate images in the Rivett orbit, a professional examination of the East Dereham register, and a Y-DNA test of the discriminating English-line kit — the last of which bypasses records entirely and is the only instrument that can move the no-record row.
Why this conclusion
- Depends on Open question Open question: untested Y-DNA discriminator (R1b-DF19)The untested discriminating Y-DNA kit is another of the three named levers.
- Depends on Open question Open: Entry E awaits professional examination of the original registerA professional reading of the East Dereham register is one of the three named levers.
- Synthesizes Analysis The record-state residual: three distinguishable states of the record holding about 44 percent between themThe residual space is what a Norfolk marriage record or kin-mention would have to shrink.
- Depends on Analysis What Candidate B rests on, and the offsets that hold it to a minority shareThe current estimate is the weighing of the four supports against the four offsets carried in the Candidate B unit.
Qualifications and conflicts
- Qualifies Identity hypothesis Candidate B: the leading named candidate at about 11 percent, on one primary record and a circumstantial webSets the bounds within which the parentage estimate can still move, and names what would move it.
- Qualifies Analysis The identification is open: every rival was tested rather than assumed, and the field did not convergeBounds the identification stated in the assessment: how far it can rise, and where it plateaus.
- Qualified by Negative result The English probate courts and Norfolk parish/marriage indexes, searched for any record naming the emigrant, his father Francis, or his family, return no positive match. No Francis Gurney G14 will survives in the Commissary, Archdeaconry, Prerogative, or Norwich courts; the two Rattlesden Rivett wills name no Margaret and no Gurney; and the Norfolk parish and same-name indexes yield no John-son-of-Francis baptism and no matching household for John or his wife Mary.The completed probate and Norfolk-index negatives reduce the remaining value of further searching to the specific named levers rather than an open-ended expectation that ordinary indexed records will solve the case.
Appears in
- John Gurney fact sheet — Fact-sheet note 8 states the parentage at "roughly a sixty percent probability" - the published estimate this item records as lagging the case file's current ~65%.
- John Gurney identity case file — Section 11, 'What would change these numbers', names the specific records that would move individual rows.
Topic file location: Identity — assessment
Technical details
- Research item:
G13-RI-000178 - Graph revision:
381 - Machine-readable JSON:
/assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000178.json
This is one research item from the John Gurney research graph; the fuller narrative treatment is in the linked topic above and the research library.