This family claim descent from Robert de Toke, who was present with Henry III. at the Battle of Northampton. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Tokes were seated at Bere, in the parish of Westcliffe, in this county: this line became extinct at the latter end of the seventeenth century.
The Tokes of Godington are a junior branch, descended from the heiress of Goldwell, of Godington, about the reign of Henry VI.
See Hasted's Kent, iii. 247; Visitations of Kent, 1574 and 1619; and Harleian MSS. 1195. 55, 1196. 108.
Arms.—Party per chevron sable and argent, three gryphon's heads erased and counterchanged. John Toke, of Godington, had an additional coat, an augmentation granted to him by Henry VII., as a reward for his expedition in a message on which he was employed to the French King: viz. Argent, on a chevron between three greyhound's heads erased sable, collared or, three plates.
Present Representative, the Rev. Nicholas Toke.
Roper of Linstead, Baron Teynham 1616.
William Roper, or Rosper, who lived in the reign of Henry III, is the first recorded ancestor; his descendants were of St. Dunstan's, near Canterbury, in the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II. Edmund Roper was one of the Justices of the Peace for this county in the time of Henry IV. and V.
The elder line of this family were seated at West-Hall, in Eltham, and also at St. Dunstan's, and became extinct in 1725. The younger and present branch at Linstead, which came from the heiress of Fineux, in the reign of Henry VIII. King James I. conferred the peerage on Sir John Roper in 1616.