In Huntingdon is the house where Oliver Cromwell was born: though it is new-built, yet they preserved that room in its first state.[60]
Stukeley.
From hence the Hermen-street goes in a strait line through Great and Little Stukeley, so called from the soil, and most anciently written Styvecle, signifying a stiff clay.[61] I should be ungrateful to my ancestors, not to mention that hence they had their name and large possessions in both towns, and many others hereabouts. I have the genealogy of them from Herebert be Styvecle, mentioned in Madox Hist. Scaccar. cap. xiv. fol. 382. mag. rot. 12. H. II. rot. 6. Cant. & Hunt. which shows that they had lands here before. His descendants of this place have been high sheriffs of the counties of Huntingdon and Cambridge more than thirty times, and knights of the shire in parliament more than forty times: but I remember Lucan says,
————perit omnis in illo
Nobilitas, cujus laus est in origine sola.
In Great Stukeley church is a font of a very ancient make, and in the north aile a monumental brass of Sir Nicholas Styvecle: the legend round the verge of the stone was kept for some time in the town chest, when it was taken off being loose, but now lost: the effigies being in the same condition, we carried it to be hung up in the hall now belonging to James Torkington esq; whose ancestors married the heiress of the family, and now enjoys the estate.
17
Inclytus Ailwinus Totius Angliæ Aldermanus
Fundator Abbatiæ de Ramsey, (In Lapide. 1719.)
