Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/347

 tary force. Eighty-two persons were taken into custody, and were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment at the assizes in the following April. In the evening of 28 Nov. 1848, James Blomfield Rush, a tenant farmer on the estate, who had sided with the claimants, and had had several violent disputes with his landlord, shot Jermy in the porch of Stanfield Hall. Entering the house by a back door Rush then shot Jermy's son, and subsequently wounded his son's wife and Eliza Chestney the housemaid. Both father and son were buried in Wymondham churchyard on 5 Dec. 1848. Jermy married first, in 1819, Mary Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Beevor, bart. She died in 1823, leaving two children, viz. Isaac Jermy Jermy (see infra) and a daughter, Ellen, who afterwards became the wife of the Rev. J. M. Jephson. Jermy married secondly, in 1832, Fanny, daughter of the Rev. Prebendary Jephson of Armagh, who died in October 1835, leaving an only daughter, Isabella.

(1821–1848), who was murdered with his father, was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1844, and M.A. 1848. He married Sophia Jane, daughter of Clement Chevalier, rector of Badingham, Suffolk, by whom he had an only surviving child, Sophia Henrietta, who inherited the Jermy property, and married Captain Reginald Thorsby Gwyn, 4th king's own royals. Their only child, Reginald Preston Jermy Gwyn, is the present owner of Stanfield Hall. Mrs. Jermy recovered from her wound and was married, secondly, on 10 Dec. 1850, to Sir Thomas Beevor, bart.

Rush was tried at the Shire-hall, Norwich, on 29 March 1849, before Baron Rolfe (afterwards Lord Cranworth). The counsel for the prosecution were Serjeant Byles, Michael Prendergast, and Charles Evans. Rush defended himself, and was convicted. He was hanged on a scaffold in front of Norwich Castle on 14 April 1849. The trial, which lasted six days, occasioned such an excitement throughout the country that the Norwich papers were published daily, and ‘several sacksful … were sent off from Norwich every day, besides others contained in the usual mail-bags’ (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. iii. 170). 

JERMY, SETH (d. 1724), captain in the navy, was a lieutenant of the Northumberland at the battle of Barfleur in May 1692. In 1694 he was first lieutenant of the Grafton, of the Burford in 1695, and of the Lion in 1696. On 15 Jan. 1696–7 he was promoted to the command of the Spy brigantine, and in December 1702 was appointed to the Nightingale, a small frigate employed in convoy service in the North Sea. For the next five years she was conducting colliers and corn-ships between the Forth, the Tyne, the Humber, and the Thames, and chasing, but apparently never catching, the enemy's privateers. On the evening of 24 Aug. 1707, being off the mouth of the Thames with a numerous convoy, she was met by a squadron of six French galleys under the command of M. de Langeron. Two of the galleys attacked the frigate; the other four gave chase to the convoy. But the Nightingale made such a stout defence that De Langeron was obliged to recall his whole force to his assistance. Even then Jermy continued to fight against overwhelming odds, and yielded only when he saw that all his convoy had got safely into the river. A year afterwards he was exchanged, and on his return to England was tried by court-martial for the loss of his ship and honourably acquitted. He was then appointed to command the Swallow's Prize, and in April 1710 was moved into the Antelope. In 1712, being, according to Charnock, of an advanced age, he was placed on the superannuated list, and died on 3 Aug. 1724. While he was a prisoner in France his pay for the Nightingale was paid to his wife Mary; and in a letter of 8 May 1712 he speaks of a kinsman, Ferdinando Wyvell. 

JERMYN, GEORGE BITTON (1789–1857), antiquary, born on 2 Nov. 1789, was the eldest son of Peter Jermyn the younger (1767–1797), solicitor, of Halesworth, Suffolk, by Sarah, second daughter and coheiress of George Bitton of Uggeshall in the same county. He was educated at Ipswich grammar school, at Norwich, and at Caius College,