Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/547

11 S. V. 8, 1912.]

The following are on the west side of the churchyard:—

Mr. F. Blacker of Glutton informs me that the Rev. W. K. Brodribb had wished to be buried at Clutton, "but, dying suddenly, he was buried away." Mr. Blacker adds that "he [the Rev. W. K. B.] showed me all the documents of all the Brodribb family for generations." Where are these now?

From 1252 to 1261 Roger de Ford, a native of Glastonbury, a man, we are told, of "great learning and eloquence," was Abbot of Glastonbury. Whilst on a journey to defend the rights of his church he died suddenly at the Bishop of Rochester's palace at Bromley, in Kent, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. It has been stated that whenever the Abbots of Glastonbury set out on a journey they were accompanied by two hundred horsemen. In the eighth year of Roger Ford's abbacy a return was made by a jury of seven of the rent and services of his demesne tenants, and in such return appears:—

One of the seven jurors making this return was William Kitel, and it was at a school kept by "Ma'am Kettle" for juveniles at Keinton-Mandeville that John Henry Brodribb (afterwards Sir Henry Irving) received the first part of his education. In the year 1327 Peter Brodribbe was one of the tenants living within the hundred of "Glaston Twelve Hides." It has been pointed out by the late Mr. C. I. Elton, Q.C., M.P., that at an early date it was decided that there might be freemen holding bond-land, but a freeman could leave at any time if he did not wish to perform the conditions of the tenure. From the year 1472 to the year 1496 a John Broderybbe was the rector of Skilgate in Somersetshire. There is hardly the least doubt that Brodribb, in its various forms of spelling, is derived from Bawdrip, near Bridgwater.

It should be placed on record that the Brodrepp family of Mapperton, Dorset, came from Hunstile, in the parish of Goathurst, Somerset, and not from Hunspill in the same county, as has been so often reiterated by quoters of Hutchins's 'History of Dorset.' "Richard Broadripp ar. ignob." of Hunstile appears in the Heralds' Visitation of 1623, and he was buried at Goathurst three years later; whilst the same registers record that "Dorothy Brodrip of Hunstile was buried June 17th, 1586." The eighteenth century was well advanced before this family sold Hunstile to Sir John Tynte of Halswell, whose descendants still possess it.