The Noble and Gentle Men of England / or, notes touching the arms and descents of the ancient knightly and gentle houses of England, arranged in their respective counties.

by Evelyn Philip Shirley

Present Representative, Sir Henry Thomas Tyrwhitt, third Baronet.

Gentle.

Gatacre of Gatacre.

A family of great antiquity, and which is said to have been established at Gatacre by a grant from Edward the Confessor. The pedigree, however, is not traced beyond the reign of Henry III.

Although very ancient, this family does not appear to have been distinguished except by "The fair maid of Gatacre," (see Blakeway, p. 169,) and by the eminent divine of this house noticed in "Fuller's Worthies," and who was the ancestor of the Gatacres of Mildenhall, in Suffolk.

See Leland's Itinerary, v. p. 31; Eyton's Antiquities of Shropshire, vol. iii. p. 86; and Morris MSS.

Arms.—Quarterly gules and ermine, on the second and third quarters three piles of the first, on a fess azure five bezants. This coat, a remarkable exception to the simple heraldry of the period, is supposed to have been granted to Humphry Gatacre, Esquire of the Body to King Henry VI. The following coat, ascribed to this family, was about the end of the seventeenth century in the church of Claverley in this county: Quarterly, first and fourth ermine, a chief indented gules; second and third gules, over all on a fess azure three bezants. (Eyton's Shropshire, iii. p. 103.)

Present Representative, Edward Lloyd Gatacre, Esq.

Eyton of Eyton.