Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/285

 12 s. vii. SEPT. is, i92o.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Herbert family of Nevis being brought to my notice, I made some investigations and found that little was known or recorded about its history, and some members of the family residing in England, with whom I succeeded in communicating were able to tell me little of certainty about their ancestors prior to the last two or three generations. Since then I have made a considerable search, endeavouring to link up the Nevis family with some branch of the Welsh Herberts, but have not, as yet, succeeded in doing so. I have examined the Wills and Administration Acts of over 700 different Herberts, and of all these I have copies or abstracts, 453 of the total being Wills. I have looked very carefully into the matter in the Literary Department at Somerset House, the British Museum, and the Public Record Office, as well as visiting the Heralds ' College on five or six occasions, but the result has been negative as regards the discovery of a direct connexion between the Nevis family and any branch of the Herberts in this country.

The first certain ancestor .of President John Richardson Herbert, of whom I have any knowledge, was a Herbert whose Christian name is unknown, but who married in the seventeenth century Mary Mount - stephen, sister of a John Mountstephen who owned an estate in Nevis, consisting of plantations, as land-holdings in the colonies were called. This Herbert, and his wife Mary, had a son Thomas, who was living in 1701. The said John Mountstephen died intestate, his widow taking out administra- tion to him. He had two sisters, Jone, who married John Barnes, and Mary, who married Herbert, the father of Thomas Herbert above mentioned. John Mount Stephen's widow afterwards married Bartholomew Harvey, and from the time of Mountstephen 's death, she, her husband, and subsequently her husband's son, and grandson, both named Thomas, lived on, or had possession of Mountstephen's estate, which, being annexed by the Harveys, became known as Harveys Plantations, or "Harveys." On the death of Bartholomew Harvey in, or before, 1673, his son Thomas had the estate, being then a minor. He died a young man, and his will, which was sworn to in Nevis, December, 1690, the testator being then dead, was proved in London, November, 1691. He bequeathed his estate to his wife Mary Harvey, and his son Thomas in equal shares, the whole, on the death of his widow, to go to his son, who was a minor in 1701.

In 1686 Thomas Herbert, the son of Herbert and Mary Mountstephen, as already mentioned, with Jone Barnes, his aunt r sister of John Mountstephen, commenced an, action against Thomas Harvey for the recovery of the Harveys Estate, to which Thomas Herbert and his aunt were joint heirs, as Mary, Thomas Herbert's mother,, the other sister of Mountstephen, was dead. Much litigation between Herbert and the 1 Harveys followed, and though a judgment in- his favour was pronounced in 1688, it was not until 1701 that Herbert succeeded in recover- ing the property, to which he was then sole heir, his Aunt Jone Barnes being dead with- out issue.

In 1701, and for a number of years before that date, William Mead, a man of some position in the Islands, had been tenant in possession of Harvey's Estate, holding: latterly under the minor Thomas Harvey. Being ejected when Herbert recovered the Plantations, Mead, as well as Harvey, the minor, through William Shipman his guar- dian, appealed to the King in Council in London. The Council referred the appeals- to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations for examination, and they were very fully reported on by Robert Hutcheson, the Attorney- General of the- Leeward Islands, whose memorial on the- case to the Lords Commissioners was very favourable to Herbert. A large number of documents at the Record Office in London refer to this lawsuit. William Mead, in his petition to the King in Council states: "One Thomas Herbert a- person of very low and mean condition in April last delivered a Declaration of Eject- ment to your Petitioner, as Tenant in* possession, pretending a Title thereto." Commenting on this, in his memorial to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Planta- tions, the Attorney-General says:

"As to the low and mean condition of the said Herbert that surely is no crime, and had he instead; of the Petitioner enjoyed his rightful inheritance for the time the same has been unjustly detained? from him he might at this day been more than on a>~ level with the wealthiest of his adversaries j though he is now owner of a small sugar Planta- tion and lives and has always done so with the character of a very honest and inoffensive- man."

Thomas Herbert, who recovered the estate,, was dead in 1715, when his property * was settled on his eldest son Thomas. The elder- Thomas left also several younger sons, one of whom, Joseph Herbert, became subsequently President of Nevis, and was grandfather of