My great grandfather, Thomas Vose, was the Little Crosby blacksmith. He was illegitimate and came from Skelmersdale. Ehe villagers apparently knew that his father was a man called Fisher, and Thomas was also known as Thomas Fisher-Vose. Since writing this, I have been provided with a Family tree showing his father as Joseph Fisher-Voce. It might be that it was Joseph who was illegitimate.

There is a story that somewhere in the Vose' history is a child by a (French or Italian?) sailor who came ashore from an Armada shipwreck. (In 1588, the ships from the Spanish armada escaped by going up the east coast of England and around the north of Scotland where many ships were lost to storms.
Any sailor shipwrecked on the West coast of England will be the survivor of a terrible journey, and will have been very fortunate to find himself in the village of Little Crosby, which was a small all-Catholic village that had not been touched by the religious and political strife of the time. Little Crosby was not touched by the civil war in the following century and remained virtually unchanged - and Catholic - up until the middle of the last century.
(Curiously, in the Anniss branch of my family it would appear that the Anniss name may derive from another Armada shipwreck.)

The history of the Vose family is closely linked to the Blundells, the village squires, for whom many generations of Vose men have worked. It is possible that the original Vose/Voce (perhaps Veaux, or Vaux) was a French mason brought to England by the Blundells, who had estates in, and links, with France. Or perhaps the original Vose was the shipwrecked sailor mentioned above.

See: A Squire's Tale - The Story of Little Crosby and also e.g. Ince-Blundell.

Little Crosby Church, St. Mary's! - A fine site by Anna Tumilty.

c. 1597, John Fazakerley married Anne Vose in Sefton

Thomas Vose died when a convict ship sank in Table Bay in 1842

Isaac Vose m. Maria Chamberlain in 1863

In 1868 a Thomas Vose, from Ormskirk was at Ampleforth Boys School

A Mrs Vose was travelling (to Australia?) with three Blundells in 1891

! In 1853 there was a ship named the 'Mary H Vose' and also one called 'Mary Blundell' There also other shipping lists.