Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

When the third Edward was on the throne one of the parsons who served Driby was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, William Merle by name, who is worthy to be remembered because he was the first Englishman to keep a diary of the weather. He was appointed in 1330, and at that time one Gilbert de Bernak was the parson at Tattershall, whose relative William de Bernak, Kt., married Alice, the daughter of Robert de Driby and Joan Tattershall, and, her three brothers dying without issue, Alice came into possession of the manor of Driby. Their son, Robert de Bernak, presented a man of the same name to Driby in 1347, who died probably of the Black Death, for he presented again two years later. Robert in some way made himself unpopular, and in 1369 we hear of his being spoiled and beaten at Driby, with many of his men grievously wounded, and his reeve and his butler both killed.

In 1374 he founded a chantry in Driby church endowed inter alia with rents from land in Driby and Friskney. His wife is called in his will Katherine de Friskney. This Robert de Bernak was the only one of the name who held the manor of Driby, for his elder brother John appears not to have done so, and to have died in 1346.

MATILDA DE BERNAK

The uncle of these de Bernaks, John de Driby, shortly before his death had granted the castle of Tattershall and the manors of Tattershall and Tumby away from his sister Alice to John de Kirton, who was knighted by Edward II., and summoned to Parliament in the sixteenth year of Edward III., 1343; so none of the de Bernaks ever held Tattershall, and it was through the direct interposition of the king that the descendants in the female line of the Driby and Bernak families got the property back. The way it came into the female line was this: The John de Bernak, eldest son of William de Bernak and Alice de Driby, had married Joan, the daughter of John Marmion of Wintringham, and had two sons and a daughter Matilda, who eventually was his sole heiress. She married Ralph second Baron Cromwell, and the presentation to her uncle, Robert de Bernak’s, chantry at Driby was left to her and to her son Robert Cromwell after her.

Then, at her mother’s death in 1360, she succeeded to her mother’s property in Norfolk, Tumby Manor and Tattershall Manor and Castle reverted to her on the death of John de Kirton in 1367 and Driby Manor with Brynkyl on her uncle, Robert De Bernak’s, death in 1387; so she held Driby, Tumby, and Tattershall, as well as property in Norfolk.

MARRIES RALPH CROMWELL

In 1395 and 1399 we find her husband, Ralph Cromwell, presenting to the chantry of the Holy Trinity in the church at Driby. They were large landholders, for, in addition to the manor of Cromwell and his other lands in Notts., he and his wife held the manor of ‘Kirkeby in Bayne’ with what are called the appurtenances to those various manors, i.e., lands in many parts of the wolds and marsh.

Tattershall Church and the Bain.

Matilda died in 1419. Her son, Ralph Cromwell, was baptised on July 15, 1414, a day memorable for a very high tide on the Lincolnshire coast which inundated all the land about Huttoft. He only lived to be twenty-eight, and was succeeded by his cousin, Ralph third Baron Cromwell, the grandson of Matilda.