LINCOLNSHIRE FAMILIES
By Rev. Canon Maddison, M.A., F.S.A.
It is quite impossible within the limits of a short paper to give an exhaustive account of the Lincolnshire Families. They can be classified as—1st, Baronial; 2nd, Knightly; 3rd, Gentle.
With the baronial, which includes such names as Darcy, Kyme, de Roos, Trehampton, &c., I do not concern myself. Their pedigrees are given, for the most part, in works of reference. Of the great baronial families I do not think a single one exists at the present day in the male line. The Neviles now seated in Lincolnshire belong to the Nottinghamshire branch of that great family. The Lincolnshire Neviles, which have been a puzzle to genealogists, have long since been extinct.
Perhaps the Watertons may be taken as an almost solitary instance of the survival of a family which held a very high position in the county in the twelfth century. The great Lincolnshire estates, it is true, passed to the Welles family in the fifteenth century, but a junior branch continued at Walton in Yorkshire down to recent times. Walton has been sold, but the late Mr. Edmund Waterton became possessed of property in St. James Deeping, where the original manor of Waterton was, and was “of Waterton Deeping.” Still, although descended from this ancient race, his line, for many hundreds of years, was connected rather with Yorkshire than Lincolnshire.
But the Langtons, of Langton by Spilsby, are an instance, quite unique in this county, of a family retaining possession of the manor and advowson of their estate from the thirteenth century. They seem to have held a higher position then than they did in later times. Strange to say, no Langton was Sheriff of the county till 1612.
The Thorolds must be content to give up the legend of being descended from a Saxon sheriff. It is surely enough to be able to say they hold property which came to them from a Lincolnshire heiress in the fourteenth century, and led them to leave Yorkshire for Marston in Lincolnshire.
The Heneages have held Hainton since the early part of the fifteenth century, and there is no doubt they were connected with it long before. What, however, is doubtful is whether their position was quite so high as a pedigree drawn up in the eighteenth century gives them. The really great person at Hainton in 1398 was Lord de la Warr, who was lord of the manor, and who in his will, proved 1st August 1398, directs that Edward of the Hill and John Heneage should immediately after his death hold conjointly his manors of Hainton for the term of their lives, and then that the reversion of the said manors should be sold, and the proceeds distributed among the poor. He also leaves 100 marks to John Heneage for a certain mansion within his (Lord de la Warr’s) demesne. He leaves Richard Wolmer his manor of Albryghton for life, and makes him, John Heneage and others, executors. When we find the Heneages afterwards in possession of the manor of Hainton, and the Wolmers of the manor of Bloxholm (also de la Warr property) it is not unreasonable to suppose that they became possessors by purchase. The Wolmers have long since passed away.
The Massingberds held land in Sutterton as early as the reign of Edward I., but moved to Burgh, Gunby, and Bratoft later on, having married a succession of heiresses. The estates have passed by marriage to cadets of the Langton and Mundy families, and the present rector of Ormsby, who has been the historian of his parish and family, is the heir male.
The Dymokes of Scrivelsby came originally in the fourteenth century from Gloucestershire. Every one knows their peculiar tenure of that manor which carries with it the right of the Championship. Every one, however, does not know the strange vicissitudes of the family—how that before the death of the old Champion, Lewis Dymoke, in 1760, he had to choose between two branches of his family as his heirs; the one in trade in London, the other in the ranks of the yeomanry in Lincolnshire. He chose the former, which was really the junior of the two, and yet, after more than a century, it became extinct, and the yeoman branch holds Scrivelsby.
The Smyths of Elkington hold an estate which they acquired in the fifteenth century. The pedigree has not been fully worked out, but it would seem that they originally were what their name implies—“Johannes Faber,” being “John the Smith.”
The Cracrofts of Hackthorn are a genuine old Lincolnshire race. They held in early times the manor of Cracroft Hall in Hogsthorpe. Warinus de Cracroft is witness in a deed of the early twelfth century. This manor passed away late in the sixteenth century, but a junior branch held land in Burgh in the marsh at the beginning of that period, and by a fortunate marriage with an heiress of the Grantham family became possessed about 1616 of the present estate of Hackthorn. Robert Cracroft had a licence for an oratory in his house of Cracroft in 1345. The family was once one of the most widely spread in Lincolnshire, but it is now seldom to be found.
The Welbys of Denton cannot prove their descent from the Moulton Welbys, though there is very strong reason for thinking it probable. They own Welby, but it was acquired by purchase.
Any one who has read Lady Elizabeth Cust’s admirably written Records of the Cust Family cannot fail to be struck with the facts she has gleaned from the muniments at Belton. A yeoman race, connected with Pinchbeck for six centuries, holding estates with title-deeds dating from 1479, and which was not “armigerous” till the seventeenth century, is now represented by Earl Brownlow, the direct male descendant.
What of the Irbys? They undoubtedly are extant, represented by Lord Boston, although he is not resident in the county. They begin to rise in position about the middle of the sixteenth century in the person of a lawyer who accumulated property round Boston. If they really are traceable to an Irby of Irby, they would rank among the oldest families; but the Visitation Pedigree of 1562 is not altogether satisfactory, and needs proof.
The Monsons were at Market Rasen as early as 1378. They, like so many other families of the age, became large landowners in the fifteenth century, having accumulated wealth by being merchants of the Staple of Calais. Lord Monson holds estates which have descended to him from the early part of the sixteenth century. The old original property at Owersby, near Market Rasen, was sold in 1834.
The Whichcotes came from Shropshire in the fifteenth century. They were “of that ilk” in the county, and what brought them to Lincolnshire was the marriage of John Whichcote with an heiress of the Tyrwhits of Harpswell. The present head of the family, Sir George Whichcote, still possesses Harpswell, though he resides at Aswarby, near Sleaford. His great-great-grandfather, Sir Christopher, married the heiress of the elder line, and united the estates of Harpswell and Aswarby.
The Maddisons came from the district of Weardale, in Durham, where they held a manor under the Bishop, by the marriage of a cadet with a Lincolnshire heiress of the Angevine family in 1452. They, like the Monsons, invested money, made by being merchants of the Staple of Calais, in Lincolnshire land. The estates acquired in this way passed out of the family, through co-heiresses of the elder line, in 1672. The junior line has still male representatives, and a remnant of the estates, bought by Sir Ralph Maddison in the reign of James I., still remains with them.
Lord Lindsey is the direct male descendant of Richard Bertie, the fortunate Sussex gentleman who wooed and won the heiress of the Willoughbys, the Duchess of Suffolk. The Alingtons of Swinhope are a cadet branch of the Alingtons of Horsheath, Colambridge, who were ennobled in the seventeenth century, and are represented in the female line by Lord Alington. They settled in Lincolnshire in the reign of Elizabeth, and retain a portion of the property then acquired.
The Andersons are now represented by Lord Yarborough, the male line at Lea having terminated with the death of the late Sir Charles Anderson. The family was virtually founded by the Lord Chief-Justice in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, who presided at the trial of Mary Queen of Scots. Francis Anderson of Manby, a gentleman of moderate estate, married Mary Pelham, who was born at Brocklesby in 1671. Her brother, Charles Pelham, the last of his race, selected as his heir, in 1763, her descendant Charles Anderson, who took the name of Pelham in addition, and was raised to the peerage. The name of Anderson has been dropped by the present Earl and his brothers.
Up to this point I have been considering only those families who are extant in the male line, and retain in some degree the estates acquired by their ancestors, from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. The seventeenth century brought in a decidedly changed condition of things. Changes had indeed taken place before, for the Wars of the Roses and the suppression of the monasteries had caused a vast quantity of land to change hands; but nothing shows the effect of this economic convulsion more clearly than a comparison of the Visitations of Lincoln in 1562 and 1592 with that of 1634. The number of families that had sprung up from the yeoman and mercantile classes is very remarkable. Then came the Commonwealth families—those who had taken the side of the Parliament in the Civil War, and had bought up the estates of “malignants” at an easy price.
A glance at the lists of sheriffs in the sixteenth century serves to show who were the leading families. The Ayscoughs, Dymokes, and Tyrwhits occur most frequently. The Copledikes had begun to decline in importance during the latter half of the century, owing no doubt to litigation; and the Skipwiths of South Ormsby by no means filled the same position they had done in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A change was taking place. The Monsons and Heneages were rising in importance. Families of comparatively humble rank in the preceding century had acquired land on easy terms after the suppression of the monasteries, when the land-market was glutted with monastic property. Towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign we see the Trollopes beginning to come forward and purchase land; Casewick was bought from the Evingtons in 1621. In 1642 a baronetcy was granted, and in recent times a peerage—i.e. Kesteven. The Listers, formerly of Burwell, still survive in the male line. They came into Lincolnshire in the seventeenth century. So also do the Scropes of Cockerington. Their connection with Lincolnshire is not of much older date, but in point of splendour of ancestry they are in the first rank. The present Mr. Scrope of Danby, in Yorkshire, still owns Cockerington, though it is no longer a place of residence. The Cholmeleys of Easton and Norton Place are also still represented in the male line. They, of course, are really a Cheshire family, but came into this county in the sixteenth century. The Fanes of Fulbeck, a cadet branch of the Westmoreland family, hold the estates they acquired early in the seventeenth century.
Up to this point I have considered families which are still extant in the male line and connected with the county. It would take far too much space if justice were done to the numerous families now represented in the female line—such as the Skipwiths, Ayscoughs, Wrays, Saundersons, Copledikes, St. Pauls, Meres, Fitzwilliams, Granthams, Armynes, Angevines, Amcotts, Asfordbys, Billesbys, Husseys, Ogles, Tournays, and many others. It may be enough to say that in the fifteenth century the Skipwiths, Copledikes, and Tyrwhits took the lead in county matters, at any rate in the Lindsey division; while in the Isle of Axholme the Sheffields, who became eventually Dukes of Buckinghamshire, were paramount. The Skipwiths and Copledikes dwindled down to extinction in the seventeenth century, and the Tyrwhits in the eighteenth, so far as Lincolnshire is concerned, though Skipwiths and Tyrwhits still hold baronetcies, but in other counties.
The Monsons, Heneages, and Wrays came into prominence in the sixteenth century. The seventeenth witnessed the Civil War, which rivalled the Wars of the Roses in its effects on families and their estates. A new class sprang up as the old families succumbed to the fines and sequestrations which befell them as a consequence of being on the Royal, i.e. the losing side. On turning to the list of High Sheriffs after the Restoration this is very evident. In 1670 Thomas Browne of Saltfleetby, of a family which was distinctly a yeoman one before the Commonwealth, served that office. The names of Lodington, Hatcher, Rothwell, Toller, all belong to families which had only recently risen from the ranks of the yeomanry.
With the eighteenth century the same change may be observed. Henry Andrews, High Sheriff in 1728, was of a family which had grown rich in trade. Joseph Banks of Revesby, High Sheriff in 1736, was a successful attorney; so also was Coney Tunnard in 1737; while St. John Wells, in spite of his aristocratic Christian name, had been a tanner. Richard Popplewell in 1740 belonged to an Isle of Axholme family of no high standing; so also Henry Herring in 1744. To multiply more instances would be needless.
But the eighteenth century witnessed also a change almost as striking as that produced by a convulsion like the Civil War; and this was the formation of a great estate on the North Lincolnshire Wolds which engulfed a number of manors belonging to impoverished families sinking under the weight of mortgages and incumbrances. In 1763 Charles Pelham of Brocklesby died childless, leaving his estates, which during his long life had been greatly increased, to his great-nephew Charles Anderson of Manby, who was then a child. During his minority the trustees bought up, by degrees, what at last constituted a magnificent property, greater than that of any other family in Lincolnshire. But this was not done without the inevitable disappearance of many families of the lesser gentry.
It has often been noted as a disastrous circumstance that the yeomanry, as a class, has vanished out of the country, and certainly the contemplation of the long list of those under that category, who contributed towards the defence of the country against the Spanish Armada in 1588, gives rise to many reflections and regrets. It may also be a subject of reflection how many of what might be called the lesser gentry have also ceased to exist. Here and there a small manor-house, now turned into a farmhouse, attests the previous habitation of an ancient family which never perhaps rose to the rank of what is now called a county family, but which had been in the county a great deal longer than many who were much higher in the social state. The name of Newcomen suggests, of course, the idea of a “Newcomer,” but the race under the name of “le Newcomen” were in Lincolnshire as early as the twelfth century. They never rose to be High Sheriffs, nor were any knighted, but they put out several branches which all possessed landed estates, and sent to Ireland a branch which was graced with a Baronetcy and Viscountcy. Not one of these branches is now to be found. The very name in Lincolnshire is almost extinct.
In writing the above paper one is conscious of not having by any means done justice to the subject. To give an exhaustive list of all the old families in this county, and to trace their fortunes, would be absolutely beyond the scope of this paper. All that can be done is to give a sketch of those families which still survive in the male line after the vicissitudes of several centuries. They are not numerous. Others, such as the Turnors of Stoke Rochford, the Sibthorps of Canwick, the Nelthorpes of Scawby, came in with the Commonwealth. A multitude sprang up in the eighteenth century, and have been largely recruited in the nineteenth. It may be questioned whether Gervase Holles would recognise many of the names which would meet his eye in the lists of magistrates. It is still more open to question whether a herald of 1562 would not “respite for further proof” a good deal of modern heraldry. To bear another man’s coat-of-arms because you happen to be of the same name would scarcely pass muster with a sixteenth century herald, but it is an innocent appropriation by no means uncommon at the present day.
I may add a word on the subject of the extinction of old mediæval families. Are they really extinct? Names are found among the peasantry which at first sight suggest a negative to that question, but I have never yet met with an authentic instance of such descent. The one that occurs to me as most probable is that of the Bushey family. Families of that name were at Leverton, Leake, and Friskney three hundred years ago, and doubtless there are descendants in the male line. The name Bushey is identical with Bussy; in fact, the pronunciation of the name at the time of the execution of Sir John Bussy, Richard II.’s favourite, in 1398, was undoubtedly Bushey, as the punning rhymes made upon it by writers of that day testify, e.g.—
“Ther is a busch that is forgrow,
Crop hit welle and hold it lowe,
Or elles it wolle be wilde.”
There is therefore some ground for supposing that these yeoman families may have descended from cadet branches of this race which held so high a position in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though positive proof is wanting.
It would be extremely interesting to trace, if possible, the descent of such families, but the difficulties are very great. The absence of wills of yeoman families prior to the fifteenth century is one great obstacle; the dearth of documents in that century is another.