Memorials of Old Lincolnshire

by Unknown

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.