Analysis

Where the matrix scores need explaining: the contextual leaders, the household leaders, and the two rows added at the close

Six candidates need their scores explained rather than read off. Candidate B is contradicted on the paternal-grandfather attribute - its whole thesis is that John's father was Francis, while the shape predicts Richard - and it is strong on corridor, trade lineage and the 1634 land sale as a push event squarely inside the window, while empty on every attribute describing an actual household. Ackworth is the only candidate scoring a father John and a mother Mary together, and the second-marriage allowance is its strongest card, because the standing objection to it is decisive only if the June 1636 marriage was John's first and the record gives no marital status. C(ii) Berkhamsted is the best household in the file and the worst on the Mary attribute. Hitcham stands at 3 percent after its mother attribute was damaged: a documented John Gurney married Susan at Farnham Royal on 30 March 1629, five miles and twenty-two months from the Hitcham baptism, and that couple has no recorded child anywhere in the seventeenth century - which does not eliminate Hitcham but supplies the unknown mother with a plausible alternative who is not a Mary. Weston Turville is quietly the best on the contextual attributes and fails on the entire child core. The two rows added at the close both illustrate the split rather than breaking it: Gurley of Westminster is the first family taken to its limit - father John, mother Mary, a Mary baptised 1631 satisfying the primary bound exactly, records stopping in 1633 - and then no Richard, no John, three surplus daughters and a surname requiring an n-to-l confusion; while Epping and North Weald is the first candidate that is mostly untested rather than mostly absent, because the coverage negative that would have closed it is void.

Confidence: Moderate-high

Topic file location: Identity — the shape, the matrix, and the two families