MEMORIAL BRASS IN THE CHURCH OF LANDULPH
Reproduced by permission of E. H. W. Dunkin, Esq., F.S.A., from his book on Cornish Brasses
Historians record only two sons, Andrew and Manuel, but according to the inscription in Landulph church there was a third, John, whom Italian writers have not mentioned.
Andrew, the eldest, married a woman from the streets of Rome, and dying childless, in 1502, bequeathed his empty honours to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, having previously sold them to Charles VIII of France. Manuel Paleologus, the second son, revisited his native country. He was granted a train of Christians and Moslems to attend him to his grave. Gibbon says: "If there be some animals of so generous a nature that they refuse to propagate in a domestic state, the last of the imperial race must be ascribed to an inferior kind; he accepted from the Sultan's liberality two beautiful females; and his surviving son was lost in the habit and religion of a Turkish slave." Thomas, who had been despot of Morea, died in 1465. By his wife, Catherine Zaccaria, he had one daughter, in addition to the sons mentioned, and this was Helen, who married Lazarus II, King of Servia, and died in 1474.
Why Theodore Paleologus came to England we do not know, but possibly in the train of Sir Henry Killigrew and Sir Nicholas Lower. Sir Nicholas had married Sir Henry's daughter, and as they were both advanced in life and childless they may have been disposed to befriend the Paleologi, and Lady Killigrew was one of the learned daughters of Sir Anthony Coke, celebrated for her knowledge of Greek, and she may have inspired her daughter, Lady Lower, with the same fondness for the classic languages. This is but conjecture; but this at least is certain, that the Paleologi were given Clifton, in Landulph, as their residence, and this was a mansion that belonged to the Lowers.
Theodore Paleologus married Mary Balls in 1615, and by her had three sons, Theodore, John, and Ferdinando, and two daughters.
Theodore was a lieutenant in the Parliamentary army in 1642, under Lord St. John, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in 1644.
There are no traces to be found of John and Ferdinando. Mary, one of the daughters of Theodore and Mary Balls, died unmarried, and was buried at Landulph in 1674. Her sister Dorothy married, in 1656, William Arundell, and died in 1681, he in 1684.