Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/11

 10* s. v. JAN. 6, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

male of the house of Nevill. Morant, Chauncy, and Drummond give the Nevills of Ridgewell, Essex, as descendants ; but I have,under the heading' Cromwell Fleet wood' (10 th S. iv. 74), given reasons for thinking that this descent is open to grave doubt.

There were about this time so many Sir Thomas Nevills of different families, that it is most difficult to distinguish between them. For instance, 1540, the date given by Morant for the death of this Sir Thomas, is really that of his father-in-law Sir Thomas Tey ; there has evidently been a confusion of notes which has been slavishly copied.

The Thomas whose I. P.M. of 1602 Morant also refers to, as that of the son and heir of our Sir Thomas, was Thomas Nevill of Stock Harvard, Essex, who married Rebecca, daughter of Gyles Allen, of Hazeleigh. He was son of Hugh Nevill of Ramsden Belhouse, whose will was proved in F603 (Com. Essex) as of Brightlingsea.

Sir Thomas Nevill of Mereworth, Speaker of the House of Commons and brother of Lord Abergavenny, died in 1543. The ' D.N.B. ' says that his first wife was Elizabeth, widow of Robert Amadas, a member of the firm of goldsmiths to Henry VIII. This marriage took place in the chapel of Jenkins Manor at Barking, Essex, on 28 August, 1532 ; but it was certainly not the first marriage of this Sir Thomas, as a monument to his daughter Margaret in Widial Church (Lipscomb's 'Bucks,' iii. 474) states that she was born in 1525, and was the daughter of Katheryne, daughter of Lord Dacre. This lady, who is buried at Narden, in Kent, and there called Elizabeth Daker, is the only wife generally given to Sir Thomas. The subject of this notice may quite possibly have been the bridegroom.

There was also a Sir Thomas, second son of Ralph, fourth Earl of Westmoreland, of whom there are no particulars in the genealogies. He was probably the Sir Thomas Nevill, K.B.,whodied in 1546(MusgraveV Obituary'). He may, however, have been the Sir Thomas Nevill who on 5 November, 1544, married Frances Amiel, widow, at Bramfield, Suffolk. She was probably the Frances Hopton who in the visitation of Suffolk, 1561, p. 44, is

said to have married first Jcromye (sic)

secondly, Sir Thomas Nevill of Yorkshire and thirdly (p. 195) the son of William Hovell of Ashfield, Suffolk. The Jeromye is a sub sequent addition, and should probably have been Jermye, the name of a well - known Suffolk family. The herald must have made a mistake, or there were two previous marriages, or possibly the Amiel is a mis

eading of the register. A Chancery suit of

561-2, Thomas Nevyll, knt, v. Arthur Rob-

arte, Esq., shows that the marriage was not

lappy, as Sir Thomas sues for the return of

a bond of 1,000. which he had given as

ecurity that he would not " beat or vex " his

wife on condition that she behaved well ; he

asserts that she had misbehaved several

imes.

Sir Thomas of the Westmoreland family i& lot mentioned in the rebellion of 1569, and lad probably died previously.

Thomas Nevill of Holt, Leicestershire, was. knighted by Somerset in 1543 on the Scotch campaign ; it was his heiress who married Thomas Smyth, of Crossing Temple, who-
 * ook the name of Nevill.

Maria Tej 7, who must have been married 1 ay 1536, died in 1544, according to the- I.P.M. of 37 Henry VIII. (1545), which names October of the preceding year as the date of her death, and states that Thomas, her son and heir, is aged nine. Morant sayj^ that she died in October, 1544, and was buried at Ardleigh ; but in view of the mistake already mentioned this requires con- firmation. He also states that in 1552' Thomas Nevill held the manor of Listen hall, in Gosfield, of the Earl of Oxford. In the parish register of Gosfield is the burial or* Maria Nevill on 19 Oct., 1544, and also the birth of Ann Nevill, 1543. In 1558 the- manor was in other hands.

There was about 1600 a Thomas Neviil, a substantial yeoman, at Gosfield, which adjoins- Halstead, where the ancestors of the Ridge- well family lived; his will (Arch. Essex> Bushen 3) was proved in 1622. He may be identical with the Thomas Nevill of Abbess Roding, a neighbouring parish, who paid sub- sidy there in 1565, and at Felsted 1 in 1571,: he probably belonged to a family of Willing- ale and Fifield of whom there are records- back to 1522 ; they intermarried with a branch of the Jocelyns.

Sir Thomas, then called of Aldham, was in political trouble in 1537 (Dom. State Papers, vol. xii. part ii. 242), when his brother Marmaduke was committed to the Tower. I ! have not been able to find what happened to Sir Thomas, but it is unlikely that he escaped Cromwell without serious fine, which may account for the little show he made in after years. He paid subsidy in 1549 and 1553.; His brother, Lord Latimer, had been implicated in the first rising in Yorkshire, which was pardoned in December, 1536: he. made his peace, and kept out of that of the ensuing February. Sir Thomas's sister was married' to Francis Norton, the prime mover, of the-