In England the surname Copage and its variants is first recorded in the sixteenth century in various parts of the country. There are four instances in Norfolk, two in London and one each in Gloucestershire and Somerset. The earliest confirmed record is the will of one Anthony Copage of London in 1537.
The greatest concentration of records from this period is to be found in the Oxfordshire village of Aston Rowant with some 15 events between 1557 and 1603 mentioning a Cubbidge.
Genealogy sites such as Ancestry.com list a number of Coppages in Solihull in the sixteenth century. However a close examination of the original records shows these to be transcription errors and the surname recorded was actually "Gossage" . The section on spelling variants shows examples of such errors.
By the seventeenth century the focus had moved to Warwickshire, particularly the village of Tanworth and neighbouring settlements such as Packwood, Studly and Edgbaston. The publication “Four Centuries of the Copage Line” traces one family line from this period to the present day.
Around this time there were also several Copages in Wiltshire, especially in the village of Cricklade just north of Swindon. Other records from this era are placed in Norfolk, Yorkshire, London and Leighton (now Leighton Buzzard) in Buckinghamshire. These are shown on the previous page.
It is interesting to note that the American-based Coppage-Coppedge Family Association trace their lineage to Richard Coppidge of Cricklade Wiltshire. Richard's father, William Copege (also spelt Copegge and Cowpage), studied at Oxford University before becoming Chaplain of Queens College. By 1587 he was serving as vicar of Chaddleworth in Berkshire (some 30 miles from Cricklade).
As can be seen on the map on the previous page, the settlements of Aston Rowant, Cricklade, Chaddleworth and Leighton are all remarkably close to the site of the ancient forest of Coppedhegge which lends credence to the theory that this was the origin of the Copage surname.
So far it has not proved possible to establish a link between this Wiltshire line with all its US descendants and the numerous Copages of Warwickshire. Furthermore, the records make it clear that these two groups occupied quite distinct levels of society. While the Wiltshire Copages were fairly well to do and could be described as middle class those in the Tanworth area were of humbler origins and typically worked as labourers. This was a period of very low social mobility which suggests that either these two clusters were unrelated or that their paths had diverged decades or perhaps even centuries earlier.