sswa...@butler.edu
2021-01-27 23:10:15 UTC
William Hexstall and his two wives Margaret Bromley and Joan ----- have been the subject of earlier posting on this list. It has been lockdown puzzle of mine to see whether anything further could be discovered about several particular questions:
the identity of his second wife Joan
the mother of his daughter Margaret who married William Whetenhall and Henry Ferrers
Margaret wife of Richard Petit. said to be William Hexstall’s daughter
William Hexstall’s parents
Happy for any insights and corrections. Happy as well to know of other documents that might refine what follows. I can be reached at sswanson [at] butler [dot] edu. Apologies for the formatting glitches I cannot seem to correct.
The documents here referenced are those that establish dates or connections. My thanks to Jan Wolfe who did early spade work on these people and to Rosemary Simons and Vance Mead (whoever they might be) who create the indexes to various Court of Common Pleas records.
Several works have studied the Hexstall families and draw upon early county histories and original records:
Frederic William Willmore, A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood (1887): 143-144
Alfred Uvedale Miller Lambert, Blechingley: A Parish History.... (London, 1921) I: 237-246
Josiah Clement Wedgwood, History of Parliament...1439-1509: Biographies of the Members of the Commons House (London, 1938): 449-451
Presumably Linda Clark, History of Commons 1422-1461 contains biographies, but I have not been able to find it yet in libraries.
William Hexstall came from a Staffordshire family. He and his brothers Thomas, Henry, and Hugh served the Stafford family in various capacities, which service brought them interests and office in Kent and Surrey as well as Staffordshire. For this network, see Carole Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Duke of Buckingham 1394-1521 (Cambridge, 1978). William served as MP a number of times and held other public office.
William was twice married. The names of his wives Margaret and Joan appear on his (undated) monumental inscription at Walsall in Staffordshire:
[Frederic William Willmore, A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood (1887): 143]
lhttps://archive.org/details/ahistorywalsall00willgoog]
He was first married by 10 September 1428 to Margaret Bromley who is named in the inquisition post mortem of her brother John Bromley both as John’s sister and heir and as wife of William Hexstall:
[http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/23-155/]
Margaret was still alive in Hilary term 1434 when her brother’s John’s widow Isabella, now married to John Pollard, sued Thomas Boughton and his wife Isabel and William Hexstall and his wife Margaret:
[http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT1/H6/CP40no692/aCP40no692fronts/IMG_0819.htm]
Margaret died sometime between spring 1434 and spring 1446.
William and Margaret had at least two children, Joan, who emerges clearly in the records, and Humphrey, who is more obscure.
a) Humphrey Hexstall
Humphrey comes into view in two records.
The first is in the inquisition post mortem 30 June 1444 of his great-aunt Thomasa Frodsham, widow of Richard Chetwynd, which describes him as Humphrey Hexstall , the son of Margaret, the daughter of William, the son of Margaret, the sister of William Froddesham , Thomasia’s father and names him Thomasia’s next heir.
[http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/26-239/]
The second is the puzzling entry in his father’s 1446 will naming “Joan wife of Humphrey Hexstall and daughter of Joan my wife”. [For will see below] Since no other Humphreys surface in the records, this Humphrey must have been William’s son. It looks as Humphrey married the daughter of his stepmother. He must have been dead in 1457 when his mother’s inheritance was settled on his sister Joan. His sisters were his father’s heirs.
[William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire 11 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1890): 237; https://archive.org/details/collectionsforhi11staf]
b) Joan Hexstall
Joan Hexstall married John Bromley of Badington. Though it does not say so explicitly, a final concord in 1457 appears to be settling Margaret Bromley’s inheritance on her daughter Joan after her father William’s death:
Between John Nedeham and Hugh Hexstall, clerk, complainants, and William Hexstall, armiger, and John Bromley, knight, and his wife Joan, deforciants of the manors of Wonyngton (Werrington) and Bromley in Halys, three messuages, 200 acres of land, forty acres of meadow, forty acres of pasture, twenty acres of wood, and 10* or rent in Podmore, Rugge, and Chatculno, and a third part of the manor of Assheley. William, John Bromley and Joan acknowledged the said manors, etc, to the right of the complainants, for which the complainants granted them to William, for his life, with remainder to the issue male of John Bromley and Joan; and failing such issue, to the right heirs of Joan [sic] forever; [On the morrow of St John the Baptist 35 Henry VI [25 June 1457]
[William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire 11 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1890): 237
https://archive.org/details/collectionsforhi11staf]
Before going further, it might help to set out a chart of the family and the connections that can be ascertained.
----- Hexstall, presumably of Hexstall and Millwich, Staffordshire
Children:
x. William Hexstall; alive 24 August 1470; his will has been lost
*1 William Hexstall married [by 10 September 1428] Margaret Bromley; heir of her brother
Children of William Hexstall and Margaret Bromley:
x. Joan Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Joan Hexstall married -----: John Bromley of Badingon
Children:
x. Isabella Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Isabella Hexstall married -----: William Needham
x. Margery Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Margery Hexstall married -----: John Harper of Rushall
x. Margaret Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Margaret Hexstall married -----: (Sir) William Stanley of Hooton
Children:
x. Margaret Stanley; heir of her mother
* Margaret Stanley married -----: (Sir) Thomas Gerrard
x. Humphrey Hexstall; dead 1457
* Humphrey Hexstall married [by 19 April 1446] Joan [Elmbrigge]
*2 William Hexstall married [by spring 1446]: Joan -----
*1 Joan ----- married -----: Nicholas James; alderman of London
Children of Nicholas James and Joan -----:
x. Isabel James; died 7 September 1472; MI Merstham, Surrey
* Isabel James married [by 1437] John Elmbrigge; died 8 February 1474; MI Merstham, Surrey
*2 John Elmbrigge married Anne Prophet; died 14[ ]
x. Amy James
* Amy James married [by 19 April 1446] -----: Thomas Hexstall
*2 Joan ----- married [by ] Roger Elmbrigge; dead spring 1446
? Joan [Elmbrigge] married [by 19 April 1446] Humphrey Hextall
Children of William Hexstall:
x. Margaret Hexstall; heir of her father [and possibly of her mother]
*1 Margaret Hexstall married [by 14 June 1454] William Whetenhall; died 4 June 1468 -----
Children:
x. William Whetenhall; heir of his mother
x. Margery Whetenhall; alive and unmarried 6 August 1487
*2 Margaret Hexstall married [by 24 August 1470]: (Sir) Henry Ferrers
Children:
x. Edward Ferrers of Baddlesley Clinton; heir of his mother
x. Elizabeth Ferrers
* Elizabeth Ferrers married -----: James Clerke of Wrotham, Kent
x. Hugh Hexstall; clerk; died 1476; probably buried Blechingley, Surrey
x. Thomas Hexstall; died 1486; buried St Nicholas, Dover
* Thomas Hexstall married [by 19 April 1446] Amy James; daughter of Nicholas James and Joan
x. Henry Hexstall; will dated 11 August 1492, proven 6 February 1492/3 PCC
*1 Henry Hexstall married [by 15 November 1466] Joan Grovehurst; daughter or sister and coheir of Richard Grovehurst
*2 Henry Hexstall married Margery -----
2. Joan ----- second wife of William Hexstall
William Hexstall’s wife Margaret Bromley last appears in the records in spring 1434. His second wife Joan first appears in the records as his wife in spring of 1446. So far as I can tell, no record names William’s wife between 1434 and 1446. Further indexing of court suits might narrow this gap.
Presumably Joan’s own family is to be found amongst the network of families serving the Stafford family. A webbing of marriages joined the Hexstall, Elmbrigge, Bromley, and Petit families. The Whetenhall family, originally from Staffordshire, might have been part of the Stafford network. The Barber family, mentioned below, was an important part of it.
Joan first appears as William’s wife in a court suit in Easter term 1446 when William and Joan prosecute a suit as the executors of Joan’s late husband Roger Elmbrigge. She also appears in a tentative will which William drew up 19 April 1446 [for which see below]. She subsequently appears as his wife in a court suit Hilary term 1448, in a final concord 25 June 1452, and last in an enfoeffment 14 June 1454.
[references and links: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/common-pleas/1399-1500/easter-term-1446 Surrey History Centre LM/2011/40
https://waalt.uh.edu/index.php/CP40/748;
http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/abstracts/CP_25_1_116_324.shtml#753
Surrey History Centre LM/341/73 or LM G.10.10.5
Joan first married Nicholas James, citizen and ironmonger of London. He was apparently from Norfolk, quite possibly Cromer to whose church he left money in his will. It’s hard to see how he might have fit into the Stafford network, yet that family did hold important estates on the northern Norfolk coast. (See Rawcliffe: xiii.) His will, dated 24 April 1433, proved 4 November 1434 PCC [PROB 11/3/348], names his wife Joan and two underage daughters Isabella and Amie; earlier children, whether Joan’s or an earlier wife’s, were buried at St Botolph Billingsgate as was he. If the age of majority of women was 18, his two daughters had been born after 24 April 1415. His will also notes holdings in Croydon which may explain his wife and daughter’s later connections with the Elmbrigge family which lived around Croydon. His biography may be found at the History of Parliament:
https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/member/james-nicholas-1433
By August 1434 Joan had married Roger Elmbrigge who was alive when Roger and Joan signed an indenture 1 February 1434/5. Later that year 8 July 1435 Roger and Joan conveyed by final concord substantial holdings in Staffordshire to Richard Petit for 300 marks of silver. He was dead by the spring of 1446.
[references:Calendar of plea and memoranda rolls preserved among the archives of the Corporation of the city London at the Guild-hall, IV (1413-1437): 274
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/common-pleas/1399-1500/easter-term-1446
http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/abstracts/CP_25_1_195_22.shtml]
Which Roger Elmbrigge she married is an unsettled question, not least, because the Elmbrigge family does not emerge with clarity in the records. Research into this family is further hampered because their surname is spelled in an unending variety of ways. (I have chosen Elmbrigge; the VCH of Surrey chose Ellingbridge.) Even the first letter of their surname is given as E, H, and O.
For some months now I had simply assumed that Joan had married Roger Elmbrigge, esquire, whose memorial brass is illustrated in a number of important volumes on memorial brasses, who died 23 November 1437 and was buried in Beddington, Surrey. He is not often noticed but he was said to have died a young man shortly after being appointed sheriff of Surrey and Sussex.
In the minimalist accounts of the family this Roger Elmbrigge is said to have been the son of another Roger Elmbrigge.
I now wonder whether Joan married the elder Roger Elmbrigge. Below we’ll see that [a] Roger Elmbrigge sold Richard Petit his rights in the manor of Badger in Shropshire in 1435. Possibly it’s likelier that the elder Roger Elmbrigge held those rights conveyed Richard Petit than his son. Against that, it might be that his son held rights to the land through his mother. The VCH account of the manor of Badger adds that in 1440 “Roger’s brother” John Elmbrigge quitclaimed his rights to Richard Petit. (This document I have been unable to find; whether it’s the document or the editor that describes John as Roger’s brother I cannot say.) It is completely unclear when the elder Roger Elmbrigge died. Since his son and heir John Elmbrigge for the most part bought his estates, there are no dates of father passing estates to son.
Again, the elder Roger’s son John married Joan’s daughter Isabel. Possibly it’s likelier that husband and wife married stepchildren to each other than mother and daughter marrying brothers. The second is hardly impossible. (Might the second possibility break canon law rules of affinity? Which may not have deterred family builders in the least.)
[reference: G. Steinman Steinman, “Some Account of the Manors of Whitehorse, Croham, and Norbury in the Parish of Croydon, Surrey, and a Pedigree of Elmerugge”, Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, volume 5, (London: John Bowyer Nichols and Son, 1838): 161-174; https://archive.org/details/collectaneatopo07nichgoog
Alfred Heales, “Merstham”, Surrey Archaeological Collections 3 (1865): 1-17 at 11-12
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-379-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_3/surreyac003_001-017_heales.pdf
Victoria County History of Shropshire, 10: 213-220
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol10/pp213-220]
There might be two heraldic clues to Joan’s identity. A monumental inscription in Walsall church reads “Orate pro animabus W’mi Hextale, et Margaretae et Johannae uxor’” and bore the Hexstall arms [Quarterly, 1 and 4 gules, a bend argent, 2 and 3 sable, a fleur de lis argent] impaling Party, per pale and per chevron. Since we know the Bromley arms [Quarterly per fesse indented gules and or], these arms presumably belong to Joan. I have been unable to identify them in any ordinary, the more so since they lack their tinctures.
[reference: Frederic William Willmore, A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood (1887): 143
https://archive.org/details/ahistorywalsall00willgoog]
The second clue appears on Roger Elmbrigge’s memorial brass. Boutell and Simpson describe the shields displayed on Roger Elmbrigge’s brass as chequy, or and sable [Elmbrigge]; and two chevronels between three cinquefoils, a label for difference. A third shield impales the Elmbrigge arms with two chevronels between three cinquefoils, a label for difference.
If Joan married the younger Roger Elmbrigge, the arms impaled, again without tinctures, might well be the arms of his wife Joan’s family. One hopeful identification fizzled out. Those arms [Argent, two chevonrels between three cinquefoils gules] were born in the seventeenth century by the Barber family of Ashmore, Dorset. As part of the Stafford network, the Hexstalls were closely connected to the Barber family of Stafford, but those Barbers born arms Ermine, two chevronels between three fleurs-de-lis gules.
[reference: Charles Boutell, The Monumental Brasses of England; (London: George Bell, 1849): unpaginated
https://archive.org/details/monumentalbrasse00boutuoft/page/n383/mode/2up
Justin Simpson, A List of the Sepulchral Brasses of England (Stamford: John Ford, 1857): 88
https://archive.org/details/listofsepulchral00simp/page/88/mode/2up
E. W. Watson, Ashmore co. Dorset. A History of the Parish (Gloucester, 1890): 94]
It may matter or it may be pure coincidence that in 1406-1407 Roger Elmbrigge, likely the father above, and John Barbour of Bishop’s Itchington were associated in an enfeoffment in Staffordshire:
[http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/21-050/]
Since the arms of William Hexstall’s wife do not appear to be the same as those of Roger Elmbrigge’s wife, quite possibly they were married to different women.
3. Margaret Hexstall’s mother
What we know of Margaret is that she was born by 19 April 1446 when she appears unmarried in her father’s will, that she was married eight years later by 14 June 1454 to William Whetenhale the younger who died in 1468, that she married Henry Ferrers in 1469, that she was dead 22 December 1499 when Henry Ferrers wrote his will and buried in the Lady Chapel in the parish church of East Peckham.
Her (surviving) children so far as we know them were named Margery, William, Edward, and Elizabeth.
The strongest evidence that Margaret was Joan’s daughter, as Jan Wolfe earlier posted, is the wording of an enfeoffment dated 14 June 1454 of lands in East Peckham, Hadlow, Wateringbury, and Nettlestead in Kent; after her parents died, this land remained to William Wetenhale the younger and his wife Margaret daughter of the same [plural] William Hexstall and Joan...” The Latin is “... Will[el]mo Wetenhale Juniori et Margarete ux[or]i eius filie eorundem Will[el]mi Hexstall et Johanne...”
[reference: Surrey History Centre LM/341/73 or LM G.10.10.5]
If Joan had been married to Roger Elmbrigge the younger who died 23 November 1437 and William and Joan had married at the end of 1437 or in 1438, they would have had time to have a daughter married at 15 or 16 in 1454.
If William’s heirs in 1457 were his two surviving daughters, Joan and Margaret, it would make sense in dividing his estate between them to give Joan the northern portion and Margaret the southern portion; even more sense were elder daughter Joan first wife Margaret’s daughter (and thus Margaret’s sole heir) and were younger daughter Margaret second wife Joan’s daughter.
At the moment this strikes me as the stronger case; but I don’t believe the evidence is definitive.
a. Records often enough spoke of stepchildren as children. The will of Elizabeth (Fisher) Woodliffe Saxby, dated 19 September 1562, proved 2 March 1563/4 PCC [PROB 11/47/80], for example, spoke of Mary Saxby throughout as Elizabeth’s daughter and then left Mary “all her mothers childe bedd geare”. In some sense Margaret was Joan’s daughter, whether Joan were her actual mother or not.
b. There is no evidence that William and Joan were married till 1446; no evidence when William’s first wife Margaret died; no evidence when Roger Elmbrigge the elder died. Joan might well have been a widow 23 November 1437, but not necessarily. Even were she was free to remarry 23 November 1437, William himself may not have been so.
c. William Hexstall’s 1446 will is just odd. It was certainly not his last will, which has not survived, to whose provisions his brother Henry Hexstall’s 1492 will refers, and which a number of legal documents implement. The 1446 will is not odd in that he wrote it 24 years before he died. People in the mid-fifteenth-century had good reason to anticipate death. Its form is odd and unlike any other will I have read. The 1446 will omits basic elements of a will: no ‘in the name of God’, no being sick or mindful of death, no commending his soul to Jesus and Mary, no burial instructions, no executors. It jumps immediately to the disposition of his lands: “This is the last will of me William Hextall of East Peckham in the county of Kent, esquire, made the 19th day of April in the 24th years of King Henry VI after the Conquest. As to the disposition of all my lands and tenements noted below with all their appurtenances.....”
It settles his lands in East Peckham in Kent and Sutton in Surrey on Joan for her life, remainder to his daughter Margaret; it names Joan’s daughters who, if Margaret dies, are to receive legacies from the sale of land in East Peckham: Isabel wife of John Elmbrigge, Amy daughter of Thomas Hextall, and Joan wife of Humphrey Hextall; and it names his daughter Margaret. The will, meticulous in asserting the maternity of Joan’s three daughters by earlier marriages, is silent about Margaret’s maternity. The will describes her only as William’s daughter.
It refrains from identifying Humphrey, alive at the time of its composition, as William’s son and heir and pretty much excludes Humphrey from the will’s provisions. Only is the case of Margaret’s death were Humphrey and his wife Joan to receive lands in Sutton. The will omits any mention of his daughter Joan possibly already married to John Bromley of Badington. Nor does it say anything about William’s lands in Staffordshire, which got careful attention in his last will 24 years later. The 1446 will’s sole mention of Staffordshire is a pious bequest.
This will then looks much more like a marriage settlement, and marriage settlements were usually drawn up at the time of marriage.
This could be read two ways. If William were protecting the interests of Joan’s daughters, its provisions for Margaret might well mean that she too was one of Joan’s daughters.
If William were drawing up a marriage settlement because he had recently married Joan, then Margaret was more likely the daughter of his first wife Margaret. For all that’s said about the early marriage of girls, she was unlikely to have married William Whetenhall at age 8.
[reference: Surrey History Centre LM/2011/40]
d. Margaret named her first daughter Margery. William Whetenhall’s mother’s name was apparently Alice. Margery is not Margaret but neither is it Joan. So far as I can tell, we know the names of four of Margaret’s (surviving) children: Margery, William, Edward, Elizabeth. No names from Joan’s family: Joan, Isabella, Amy (possibly Anna).
e. Heraldry does not offer any clear help. Children of heiresses were entitled to quarter their mother’s arms. William Hextall’s family abounded in children who were heirs of their fathers, mothers, or both:
William Hexstall
*1 William Hexstall married [by ] Margaret Bromley; heir of her brother
Children of William Hexstall and Margaret Bromley:
x. Joan Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Joan Hexstall married -----: John Bromley of Badingon
Children:
x. Isabella Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Isabella Hexstall married -----: William Needham
x. Margery Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Margery Hexstall married -----: John Harper of Rushall
x. Margaret Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Margaret Hexstall married -----: (Sir) William Stanley of Hooton
Children:
x. Margaret Stanley; heir of her mother
* Margaret Stanley married -----: (Sir) Thomas Gerrard
Children of William Hexstall and [Margaret Bromley or Joan -----]
x. Margaret Hexstall; heir of her father [and possibly of her mother]
*1 Margaret Hexstall married -----: William Whetenhall
Children:
x. William Whetenhall; heir of his mother
x. Margery Whetenhall
*2 Margaret Hexstall married -----: (Sir) Henry Ferrers
Children:
x. Edward Ferrers of Baddlesley Clinton; heir of his mother
x. Elizabeth Ferrers
A. C. Fox-Davies sets out the rules of quartering [A Complete Guide to Heraldry (reprint New York, 1993): 547-549] although it’s not clear whether the rules he prescribes are those of the early C20 or those at play in C15. Here’s a summation:
If A is entitled to quarter B and B is entitled to quarter C, then A may quarter B and C or omit them as A wishes, with the exception that A may not quarter earlier arms without quartering the intermediate arms; So:
1) A may quarter B and C
2) A may omit B and C
3) A may quarter B and omit C
4) A may quarter C only if A also quarters B
Accordingly quartering arms represents [a claim to] descent; the absence of quarterings may mean a) no [claim to] descent; b) indifference to descent; or c) ignorance of descent. The absence of quartered arms is thus not itself evidence of absence of descent from an heiress.
The arms here also come from records at least a century later than the people we’re talking about.
[Links to the various county visitations may be found on Chris Phillips’ website: http://medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sources/visitations.shtml]
Were William’s daughter Margaret the daughter of his first wife Margaret Bromley, his daughter’s Whetenhall and Ferrers descendants would be entitled to quarter the Bromley arms. They do not appear to do so.
The Whetenhall arms [Visitation of Kent 1592: 115-116] quarter Hexstall and Hewett but not the Bromley or its quarterings that would follow in order. The Whetenhall arms [Visitation of Kent 1663-1668: 178] likewise quarter Hexstall and Hewett and do in fact go on the quarter the Bromley arms; but they quarter the wrong Bromley arms, those to which Joan’s Hexstall’s husband John Bromley was entitled, not those to which William Hextall’s wife Margaret Bromley was entitled. So the 1663-1668 version of the arms appears in this regard to be padding the eschutcheon.
The Ferrers of Baddesley Clinton [Visitation of Warwickshire 1619: 4] quartered Hexstall and Hewett but not Bromley.
It turns out, however, that the descendants of William’s elder daughter Joan, who were certainly entitled to quarter the Bromley arms did not ordinarily do so, (possibly because they already bore a fuller blazon of the the Bromley arms and its quarterings through their father John Bromley).
The Needham family [Visitation of Cheshire 1580: 184; Visitation of Shropshire 1623: 371] quartered (John) Bromley first where we would expect, then Hexstall and Hewett, but not (Margaret) Bromley again.
The Stanley of Hooton arms [Visitation of Cheshire 1580: 214-216] are those of Sir William Stanley’s descendants by his second wife Agnes Grosvenor. His first wife Margery Hextall’s daughter Margaret married Peter Gerard. Their descendants’ arms quartered Hexstall only.
[J. Paul Rylands, “Notes taken in the Church of Preston, Manchester, Eccles, Winwick, Farnworth, Sephton, and Hale, in the count of Lancaster.....”, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 50 (1898), new series 14: 203-231 at 211]
The Leighs of Rushall who descended from John Harpur and Margery Hexstall did quarter (John) Bromley first, then Hexstall and Hewett, then (Margaret) Bromley again but not her second set of Bromley quarterings. [Visitation of Staffordshire 1583: 101-103] They were the only family to quarter Margaret Bromley’s arms.
The absence of Bromley quartering from the Whetenhall and Ferrers arms, then, is inconclusive. It may represent no descent from Margaret Bromley, or, it may represent simple omission of her arms.
4. Margaret wife of Richard Petit.
Erdeswicke (later 1500s), Bridgeman (1881), and Willmore (1887) all state that Margaret wife of Richard Petit was Margaret Hexstall. Erdeswicke, followed by Bridgeman and Willmore, identifies her as William Hexstall’s daughter. Lambert (1921) argues that she must have been William Hexstall’s sister. Erdeswicke who lived within a hundred years of these people might well have had local knowledge. It may also be that he knew that William Hexstall had a daughter Margaret, that William’s estate at Hexstall and at Millwich had been divided in two and descended to the Bromley and Petit families, and assumed that just as William’s daughter Joan had married John Bromley, William’s daughter Margaret must have married Richard Petit. These are reasonable inferences to make. It could also be that Hexstall and Millwich had already been divided by some conveyance lost to us and that Margaret’s half came to her not from William but from some other family member or someone else altogether.
Sampson Erdeswicke, Survey of Staffordshire, ed. Harwood (Westminster, 1820): 45, 116
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_KrUHAAAAQAAJ/page/n111/mode/2up?q=millwich
George Bridgeman, “History of the Parish of Blymhill”, part I, William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire 1 (1880): 289-384 and 2, part 2 (1881): 67-147 at 105-108
https://archive.org/details/collectionsforhi18812staf/page/n303/mode/2up
Frederic William Willmore, A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood (1887): 143-144
https://archive.org/details/ahistorywalsall00willgoog
Uvedale Lambert, Blechingley, two volumes, (London, 1921): I: 243-246
https://archive.org/details/blechingleyparis01lamb/page/n7/mode/2up
None of the visitations treating the Petit family name Richard Petit’s wife. The only record I can find that does name her is the monumental inscription in Walsall church noted by Willmore above: “Pray for the souls of Richard Petett, and his wife Margaret, and John Petett”. He gives their arms as “A chevron between three bugle horns”. Here it would have been helpful if the monumental inscription had impaled Richard’s wife’s arms as the Hexstall monumental inscriptions do. It looks as though the monumental inscription was put in place by their son John Petit, who, if his mother were not an heiress, would not be entitled to quarter her arms. Were Margaret the sister of the four Hexstall brothers, she would not have been an heiress.
[Petit of Hexstall, Visitation of Staffordshire 1583: 124; Kynnersley of Loxley, Badger, and Cleobury North, Visitation of Shropshire 1623: 300
Richard Petit was of age in 1435 when he paid Roger Elmbrigge and his wife Joan 300 marks of silver for a variety of property in Staffordshire [see above] which would make him roughly William Hexstall’s age. Richard’s son John Petit was active at least from 1457 onward, so he must have born by 1436. He could not have been William Hexstall’s grandson. He was nonetheless constantly a party with the Hexstall brothers to property transactions. At the end his life William Hexstall made John Petit one of the feoffees to whom he entrusted his property. Though there is no definitive evidence, so far as I can see, these circumstances strongly suggest that John Petit was William Hexstall’s close relative, quite probably his nephew.
My impression is, then, that Margaret wife of Richard Petit was William Hexstall’s sister.
[http://medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/abstracts/CP_25_1_116_327.shtml#832 (1457)
Surrey Historical Centre LM/342/16 (1469)]
5. William Hextall’s parents
A number of historians of Kent have repeated the claim that William Hexstall was the son of Richard Hexstall of Hexstall’s Court in the parish of East Peckham, Kent, who had married Anne daughter of heir of Richard Grovehurst. Edward Hasted (1782/1798) is often quoted in this regard. He drew his information from Thomas Philipott (1776).
Edward Hasted: The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent.... (Canterbury, 1798) V: 91-106 and 311-322
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol5/pp91-106
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol5/pp311-322
Thomas Philipott, Villare Cantianum; or Kent Surveyed and Illustrated... (Lynn, 1776): 151, 190
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015030878980&view=1up&seq=1
Ordinarily, it is a simple matter to confirm Hasted, but my efforts to find Richard Hexstall invariably come to naught. For reasons that follow, I think Philipott jumbled his notes and is responsible for the confusion.
He says of the manor of Chartons (page 151): “In times of a lower descent, it was the possession of a good old family called Groveherst. William de Groveherst paid respective aid for it, at the making the Black Prince knight, and from him it devolved to his successor Richard Groveherst, who in the reign of Henry the fourth, determined in three daughters and co-heirs, married to Richard Tickhill, Richard Hextall, and John Petit, who about the beginning of Henry the sixth, passed one moiety of it to John Martin....”
He is clearly referring to a series of documents two generations later involving Ralph Tickhill and his wife Elizabeth, Henry Hexstall and his wife Joan, John Honington and his wife Alice, and John Petit and his wife Agnes. The four wives were the heirs [daughters or sisters] of Richard Grovehurst and his wife Joan. That relationship is set out in an acquittance by Edmund Chymbeham, executor of his brother John Chymbeham to these eight 15 November 1466. The eight were associated about that time in a lawsuit Hexstall vs Rodney 1463-1467. These same heirs demised their inheritance to Thomas Sibill 20 January 1480 [1479/80? 1480/1?] at which point it appears that Henry Hexstall’s wife Joan Grovehurst had died and Alice Grovehurst was now married to Richard Nutward.
[National Archives E 40/5372
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4944125
National Archives C 1/30/20
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7443258
National Archives E/40/5393
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4944146
(The Kynnersley pedigree [Visitation of Shropshire 1623: 300] also notes the marriage of John Petit to Agnes daughter of Richard Grovehurst and Henry Hexstall to Joan Grovehurst.)
Philipott identifies three of the four heirs in these conveyances. For some reason he moved them back two generations or so, omitted the fourth heir, and got Henry Hexstall’s name wrong. It’s likely then that Richard Hexstall of Hexstall’s Court never existed.
William Hexstall’s parents then are to be found in Staffordshire.
As we have already seen, his descendants quartered not only the arms of Hexstall but usually the arms of Hewett as well. This opens two possibilities.
a) The visitations record, in a blurry time frame, that sometime in the C14 Thomas Hexstall married Elizabeth Hewett, daughter of John Hewett and Catherine Bowles and her father’s heir; Catherine Bowles was in turn daughter of William Bowles and Elizabeth Gifford and her father’s heir. The Shropshire visitation suggests that the arms ordinarily described as Hewett [Sable, a chevron engrailed between three owls argent] belonged to William Bowles, so possibly they were passed on as quarterings to the Hewett arms or simply adopted as the Hewett arms.
[Leigh, Rushall, Bowles, etc in the Visitation of Staffordshire 1583: 103-104; Harpur of Rushall in the Visitation of Shropshire 1623: 218]
According to the inquisition post mortem of William Peyto made 18 June 1411 at Stafford, Elizabeth formerly wife of Thomas Hexstall held of him lands in 9s 10d in Great Wyrley, so Thomas Hexstall was dead by then. He might have been dead much earlier. In the spring of 1380 Matilda widow of Hugh Snell brought suit against a number of men for the death of her husband, amongst whom was Thomas Hexstall. The sheriff ordered to arrest him reported that Thomas Hexstall was dead. If it were Elizabeth’s husband who died in 1380, could not have been the father of the four Hexstall brothers. Even if he were dead in 1411, he might not have lived long enough to father the younger Hexstall brothers. They died in 1476, 1486, and 1492-1493.
[http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/19-953/
https://archive.org/details/collectionsforhi14staf_0/page/n325/mode/2up]
I don’t know if matters that the visitations show no children for Thomas Hexstall and Elizabeth Hewett, considering that she was her father’s heir; nor do they assign Thomas Hexstall a location.
b) We have already met two monumental inscriptions in Walsall church. The third is to Hugh Hextall and his wife Isabel. Willmore again: “Pray for the souls of Hugh Hexstall and his wife Isabel.” He gives their arms as Quarterly, 1 and 4 gules, a bend argent, 2 and 3 sable, a fleur de lis argent, impaling Sable, a chevron engrailed, between three owls argent.
Hugh’s wife Isabel thus bore the same arms as Thomas’ wife Elizabeth. Though she does not show up in the visitations, her arms suggest that she belonged to the Hewett family.
Frederic William Willmore, A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood (1887): 143
https://archive.org/details/ahistorywalsall00willgoog
Erdeswicke reports that on Hugo de Hextall held Millwich into the reign of Henry VI and had issue William who married Margaret Bromley. Wedgwood (449-451), who was aware of the Richard Hexstall possibility, also decided that Hugh was the father of both William and Thomas.
Sampson Erdeswicke, Survey of Staffordshire, ed. Harwood (Westminster, 1820): 45, 116
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_KrUHAAAAQAAJ/page/n111/mode/2up?q=millwich
It would be good to have further particulars about Hugh’s tenure of Hextall and Millwich–possibly tax records or manorial records might survive that would sketch in his tenure--yet, even so, he seems the likeliest candidate to be father of the four Hexstall brothers, not least because Hugh and William were buried, or at least memorialised, in the same church.
c) William Hexstall described himself 9 December 1460 as cousin and next heir of Isabel de Hopton late of Ludlow when he released rights in a tenement in Ludlow to Thomas Gryme. The word cousin was broader then than now, so William might have been her nephew or her cousin or even more distant kinsman, but he does say he was her next heir, so most likely Isabel was his paternal aunt or paternal cousin and dead 9 December 1460.
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4947897
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/ancient-deeds/vol4/pp392-401 = Ancient Deed 9138
Isabel may well have been the Isabel daughter and heir of Thomas Hexstall, widow, who sold half a watermill at Millwich to William Bradshaw in 1453-1454. She may well have been the same person as Isabel Hexstall who in Hillary term 1457/8 sued Joan widow of William Birmingham for breaking into her close as Great Barre. William Hexstall himself had sued Joan in Trinity term 1436 twenty years before for exactly the same offense in the same place.
William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, new series, 12 (1909) [= Chetwynd, History of Pirehill Hundred]: 163
https://archive.org/details/newcollectionsfo12stafuoft/page/n3/mode/2up
William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, new series, 4 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1901): 104
https://archive.org/details/collectionsfora13socigoog
William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, new series, 3 (1900): 146
https://archive.org/details/newcollectionsforhi03stafuoft/
If these inferences are correct, then Isabel was likely the daughter and heir of Thomas Hexstall and Elizabeth Hewett. Since both Isabel and William held rights of some sort in both Great Barre and Millwich, it appears that Isabel’s father Thomas Hexstall was the younger brother of William’s father Hugh Hexstall.
the identity of his second wife Joan
the mother of his daughter Margaret who married William Whetenhall and Henry Ferrers
Margaret wife of Richard Petit. said to be William Hexstall’s daughter
William Hexstall’s parents
Happy for any insights and corrections. Happy as well to know of other documents that might refine what follows. I can be reached at sswanson [at] butler [dot] edu. Apologies for the formatting glitches I cannot seem to correct.
The documents here referenced are those that establish dates or connections. My thanks to Jan Wolfe who did early spade work on these people and to Rosemary Simons and Vance Mead (whoever they might be) who create the indexes to various Court of Common Pleas records.
Several works have studied the Hexstall families and draw upon early county histories and original records:
Frederic William Willmore, A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood (1887): 143-144
Alfred Uvedale Miller Lambert, Blechingley: A Parish History.... (London, 1921) I: 237-246
Josiah Clement Wedgwood, History of Parliament...1439-1509: Biographies of the Members of the Commons House (London, 1938): 449-451
Presumably Linda Clark, History of Commons 1422-1461 contains biographies, but I have not been able to find it yet in libraries.
William Hexstall came from a Staffordshire family. He and his brothers Thomas, Henry, and Hugh served the Stafford family in various capacities, which service brought them interests and office in Kent and Surrey as well as Staffordshire. For this network, see Carole Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Duke of Buckingham 1394-1521 (Cambridge, 1978). William served as MP a number of times and held other public office.
William was twice married. The names of his wives Margaret and Joan appear on his (undated) monumental inscription at Walsall in Staffordshire:
[Frederic William Willmore, A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood (1887): 143]
lhttps://archive.org/details/ahistorywalsall00willgoog]
He was first married by 10 September 1428 to Margaret Bromley who is named in the inquisition post mortem of her brother John Bromley both as John’s sister and heir and as wife of William Hexstall:
[http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/23-155/]
Margaret was still alive in Hilary term 1434 when her brother’s John’s widow Isabella, now married to John Pollard, sued Thomas Boughton and his wife Isabel and William Hexstall and his wife Margaret:
[http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT1/H6/CP40no692/aCP40no692fronts/IMG_0819.htm]
Margaret died sometime between spring 1434 and spring 1446.
William and Margaret had at least two children, Joan, who emerges clearly in the records, and Humphrey, who is more obscure.
a) Humphrey Hexstall
Humphrey comes into view in two records.
The first is in the inquisition post mortem 30 June 1444 of his great-aunt Thomasa Frodsham, widow of Richard Chetwynd, which describes him as Humphrey Hexstall , the son of Margaret, the daughter of William, the son of Margaret, the sister of William Froddesham , Thomasia’s father and names him Thomasia’s next heir.
[http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/26-239/]
The second is the puzzling entry in his father’s 1446 will naming “Joan wife of Humphrey Hexstall and daughter of Joan my wife”. [For will see below] Since no other Humphreys surface in the records, this Humphrey must have been William’s son. It looks as Humphrey married the daughter of his stepmother. He must have been dead in 1457 when his mother’s inheritance was settled on his sister Joan. His sisters were his father’s heirs.
[William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire 11 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1890): 237; https://archive.org/details/collectionsforhi11staf]
b) Joan Hexstall
Joan Hexstall married John Bromley of Badington. Though it does not say so explicitly, a final concord in 1457 appears to be settling Margaret Bromley’s inheritance on her daughter Joan after her father William’s death:
Between John Nedeham and Hugh Hexstall, clerk, complainants, and William Hexstall, armiger, and John Bromley, knight, and his wife Joan, deforciants of the manors of Wonyngton (Werrington) and Bromley in Halys, three messuages, 200 acres of land, forty acres of meadow, forty acres of pasture, twenty acres of wood, and 10* or rent in Podmore, Rugge, and Chatculno, and a third part of the manor of Assheley. William, John Bromley and Joan acknowledged the said manors, etc, to the right of the complainants, for which the complainants granted them to William, for his life, with remainder to the issue male of John Bromley and Joan; and failing such issue, to the right heirs of Joan [sic] forever; [On the morrow of St John the Baptist 35 Henry VI [25 June 1457]
[William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire 11 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1890): 237
https://archive.org/details/collectionsforhi11staf]
Before going further, it might help to set out a chart of the family and the connections that can be ascertained.
----- Hexstall, presumably of Hexstall and Millwich, Staffordshire
Children:
x. William Hexstall; alive 24 August 1470; his will has been lost
*1 William Hexstall married [by 10 September 1428] Margaret Bromley; heir of her brother
Children of William Hexstall and Margaret Bromley:
x. Joan Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Joan Hexstall married -----: John Bromley of Badingon
Children:
x. Isabella Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Isabella Hexstall married -----: William Needham
x. Margery Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Margery Hexstall married -----: John Harper of Rushall
x. Margaret Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Margaret Hexstall married -----: (Sir) William Stanley of Hooton
Children:
x. Margaret Stanley; heir of her mother
* Margaret Stanley married -----: (Sir) Thomas Gerrard
x. Humphrey Hexstall; dead 1457
* Humphrey Hexstall married [by 19 April 1446] Joan [Elmbrigge]
*2 William Hexstall married [by spring 1446]: Joan -----
*1 Joan ----- married -----: Nicholas James; alderman of London
Children of Nicholas James and Joan -----:
x. Isabel James; died 7 September 1472; MI Merstham, Surrey
* Isabel James married [by 1437] John Elmbrigge; died 8 February 1474; MI Merstham, Surrey
*2 John Elmbrigge married Anne Prophet; died 14[ ]
x. Amy James
* Amy James married [by 19 April 1446] -----: Thomas Hexstall
*2 Joan ----- married [by ] Roger Elmbrigge; dead spring 1446
? Joan [Elmbrigge] married [by 19 April 1446] Humphrey Hextall
Children of William Hexstall:
x. Margaret Hexstall; heir of her father [and possibly of her mother]
*1 Margaret Hexstall married [by 14 June 1454] William Whetenhall; died 4 June 1468 -----
Children:
x. William Whetenhall; heir of his mother
x. Margery Whetenhall; alive and unmarried 6 August 1487
*2 Margaret Hexstall married [by 24 August 1470]: (Sir) Henry Ferrers
Children:
x. Edward Ferrers of Baddlesley Clinton; heir of his mother
x. Elizabeth Ferrers
* Elizabeth Ferrers married -----: James Clerke of Wrotham, Kent
x. Hugh Hexstall; clerk; died 1476; probably buried Blechingley, Surrey
x. Thomas Hexstall; died 1486; buried St Nicholas, Dover
* Thomas Hexstall married [by 19 April 1446] Amy James; daughter of Nicholas James and Joan
x. Henry Hexstall; will dated 11 August 1492, proven 6 February 1492/3 PCC
*1 Henry Hexstall married [by 15 November 1466] Joan Grovehurst; daughter or sister and coheir of Richard Grovehurst
*2 Henry Hexstall married Margery -----
2. Joan ----- second wife of William Hexstall
William Hexstall’s wife Margaret Bromley last appears in the records in spring 1434. His second wife Joan first appears in the records as his wife in spring of 1446. So far as I can tell, no record names William’s wife between 1434 and 1446. Further indexing of court suits might narrow this gap.
Presumably Joan’s own family is to be found amongst the network of families serving the Stafford family. A webbing of marriages joined the Hexstall, Elmbrigge, Bromley, and Petit families. The Whetenhall family, originally from Staffordshire, might have been part of the Stafford network. The Barber family, mentioned below, was an important part of it.
Joan first appears as William’s wife in a court suit in Easter term 1446 when William and Joan prosecute a suit as the executors of Joan’s late husband Roger Elmbrigge. She also appears in a tentative will which William drew up 19 April 1446 [for which see below]. She subsequently appears as his wife in a court suit Hilary term 1448, in a final concord 25 June 1452, and last in an enfoeffment 14 June 1454.
[references and links: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/common-pleas/1399-1500/easter-term-1446 Surrey History Centre LM/2011/40
https://waalt.uh.edu/index.php/CP40/748;
http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/abstracts/CP_25_1_116_324.shtml#753
Surrey History Centre LM/341/73 or LM G.10.10.5
Joan first married Nicholas James, citizen and ironmonger of London. He was apparently from Norfolk, quite possibly Cromer to whose church he left money in his will. It’s hard to see how he might have fit into the Stafford network, yet that family did hold important estates on the northern Norfolk coast. (See Rawcliffe: xiii.) His will, dated 24 April 1433, proved 4 November 1434 PCC [PROB 11/3/348], names his wife Joan and two underage daughters Isabella and Amie; earlier children, whether Joan’s or an earlier wife’s, were buried at St Botolph Billingsgate as was he. If the age of majority of women was 18, his two daughters had been born after 24 April 1415. His will also notes holdings in Croydon which may explain his wife and daughter’s later connections with the Elmbrigge family which lived around Croydon. His biography may be found at the History of Parliament:
https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/member/james-nicholas-1433
By August 1434 Joan had married Roger Elmbrigge who was alive when Roger and Joan signed an indenture 1 February 1434/5. Later that year 8 July 1435 Roger and Joan conveyed by final concord substantial holdings in Staffordshire to Richard Petit for 300 marks of silver. He was dead by the spring of 1446.
[references:Calendar of plea and memoranda rolls preserved among the archives of the Corporation of the city London at the Guild-hall, IV (1413-1437): 274
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/common-pleas/1399-1500/easter-term-1446
http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/abstracts/CP_25_1_195_22.shtml]
Which Roger Elmbrigge she married is an unsettled question, not least, because the Elmbrigge family does not emerge with clarity in the records. Research into this family is further hampered because their surname is spelled in an unending variety of ways. (I have chosen Elmbrigge; the VCH of Surrey chose Ellingbridge.) Even the first letter of their surname is given as E, H, and O.
For some months now I had simply assumed that Joan had married Roger Elmbrigge, esquire, whose memorial brass is illustrated in a number of important volumes on memorial brasses, who died 23 November 1437 and was buried in Beddington, Surrey. He is not often noticed but he was said to have died a young man shortly after being appointed sheriff of Surrey and Sussex.
In the minimalist accounts of the family this Roger Elmbrigge is said to have been the son of another Roger Elmbrigge.
I now wonder whether Joan married the elder Roger Elmbrigge. Below we’ll see that [a] Roger Elmbrigge sold Richard Petit his rights in the manor of Badger in Shropshire in 1435. Possibly it’s likelier that the elder Roger Elmbrigge held those rights conveyed Richard Petit than his son. Against that, it might be that his son held rights to the land through his mother. The VCH account of the manor of Badger adds that in 1440 “Roger’s brother” John Elmbrigge quitclaimed his rights to Richard Petit. (This document I have been unable to find; whether it’s the document or the editor that describes John as Roger’s brother I cannot say.) It is completely unclear when the elder Roger Elmbrigge died. Since his son and heir John Elmbrigge for the most part bought his estates, there are no dates of father passing estates to son.
Again, the elder Roger’s son John married Joan’s daughter Isabel. Possibly it’s likelier that husband and wife married stepchildren to each other than mother and daughter marrying brothers. The second is hardly impossible. (Might the second possibility break canon law rules of affinity? Which may not have deterred family builders in the least.)
[reference: G. Steinman Steinman, “Some Account of the Manors of Whitehorse, Croham, and Norbury in the Parish of Croydon, Surrey, and a Pedigree of Elmerugge”, Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, volume 5, (London: John Bowyer Nichols and Son, 1838): 161-174; https://archive.org/details/collectaneatopo07nichgoog
Alfred Heales, “Merstham”, Surrey Archaeological Collections 3 (1865): 1-17 at 11-12
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-379-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_3/surreyac003_001-017_heales.pdf
Victoria County History of Shropshire, 10: 213-220
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol10/pp213-220]
There might be two heraldic clues to Joan’s identity. A monumental inscription in Walsall church reads “Orate pro animabus W’mi Hextale, et Margaretae et Johannae uxor’” and bore the Hexstall arms [Quarterly, 1 and 4 gules, a bend argent, 2 and 3 sable, a fleur de lis argent] impaling Party, per pale and per chevron. Since we know the Bromley arms [Quarterly per fesse indented gules and or], these arms presumably belong to Joan. I have been unable to identify them in any ordinary, the more so since they lack their tinctures.
[reference: Frederic William Willmore, A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood (1887): 143
https://archive.org/details/ahistorywalsall00willgoog]
The second clue appears on Roger Elmbrigge’s memorial brass. Boutell and Simpson describe the shields displayed on Roger Elmbrigge’s brass as chequy, or and sable [Elmbrigge]; and two chevronels between three cinquefoils, a label for difference. A third shield impales the Elmbrigge arms with two chevronels between three cinquefoils, a label for difference.
If Joan married the younger Roger Elmbrigge, the arms impaled, again without tinctures, might well be the arms of his wife Joan’s family. One hopeful identification fizzled out. Those arms [Argent, two chevonrels between three cinquefoils gules] were born in the seventeenth century by the Barber family of Ashmore, Dorset. As part of the Stafford network, the Hexstalls were closely connected to the Barber family of Stafford, but those Barbers born arms Ermine, two chevronels between three fleurs-de-lis gules.
[reference: Charles Boutell, The Monumental Brasses of England; (London: George Bell, 1849): unpaginated
https://archive.org/details/monumentalbrasse00boutuoft/page/n383/mode/2up
Justin Simpson, A List of the Sepulchral Brasses of England (Stamford: John Ford, 1857): 88
https://archive.org/details/listofsepulchral00simp/page/88/mode/2up
E. W. Watson, Ashmore co. Dorset. A History of the Parish (Gloucester, 1890): 94]
It may matter or it may be pure coincidence that in 1406-1407 Roger Elmbrigge, likely the father above, and John Barbour of Bishop’s Itchington were associated in an enfeoffment in Staffordshire:
[http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/21-050/]
Since the arms of William Hexstall’s wife do not appear to be the same as those of Roger Elmbrigge’s wife, quite possibly they were married to different women.
3. Margaret Hexstall’s mother
What we know of Margaret is that she was born by 19 April 1446 when she appears unmarried in her father’s will, that she was married eight years later by 14 June 1454 to William Whetenhale the younger who died in 1468, that she married Henry Ferrers in 1469, that she was dead 22 December 1499 when Henry Ferrers wrote his will and buried in the Lady Chapel in the parish church of East Peckham.
Her (surviving) children so far as we know them were named Margery, William, Edward, and Elizabeth.
The strongest evidence that Margaret was Joan’s daughter, as Jan Wolfe earlier posted, is the wording of an enfeoffment dated 14 June 1454 of lands in East Peckham, Hadlow, Wateringbury, and Nettlestead in Kent; after her parents died, this land remained to William Wetenhale the younger and his wife Margaret daughter of the same [plural] William Hexstall and Joan...” The Latin is “... Will[el]mo Wetenhale Juniori et Margarete ux[or]i eius filie eorundem Will[el]mi Hexstall et Johanne...”
[reference: Surrey History Centre LM/341/73 or LM G.10.10.5]
If Joan had been married to Roger Elmbrigge the younger who died 23 November 1437 and William and Joan had married at the end of 1437 or in 1438, they would have had time to have a daughter married at 15 or 16 in 1454.
If William’s heirs in 1457 were his two surviving daughters, Joan and Margaret, it would make sense in dividing his estate between them to give Joan the northern portion and Margaret the southern portion; even more sense were elder daughter Joan first wife Margaret’s daughter (and thus Margaret’s sole heir) and were younger daughter Margaret second wife Joan’s daughter.
At the moment this strikes me as the stronger case; but I don’t believe the evidence is definitive.
a. Records often enough spoke of stepchildren as children. The will of Elizabeth (Fisher) Woodliffe Saxby, dated 19 September 1562, proved 2 March 1563/4 PCC [PROB 11/47/80], for example, spoke of Mary Saxby throughout as Elizabeth’s daughter and then left Mary “all her mothers childe bedd geare”. In some sense Margaret was Joan’s daughter, whether Joan were her actual mother or not.
b. There is no evidence that William and Joan were married till 1446; no evidence when William’s first wife Margaret died; no evidence when Roger Elmbrigge the elder died. Joan might well have been a widow 23 November 1437, but not necessarily. Even were she was free to remarry 23 November 1437, William himself may not have been so.
c. William Hexstall’s 1446 will is just odd. It was certainly not his last will, which has not survived, to whose provisions his brother Henry Hexstall’s 1492 will refers, and which a number of legal documents implement. The 1446 will is not odd in that he wrote it 24 years before he died. People in the mid-fifteenth-century had good reason to anticipate death. Its form is odd and unlike any other will I have read. The 1446 will omits basic elements of a will: no ‘in the name of God’, no being sick or mindful of death, no commending his soul to Jesus and Mary, no burial instructions, no executors. It jumps immediately to the disposition of his lands: “This is the last will of me William Hextall of East Peckham in the county of Kent, esquire, made the 19th day of April in the 24th years of King Henry VI after the Conquest. As to the disposition of all my lands and tenements noted below with all their appurtenances.....”
It settles his lands in East Peckham in Kent and Sutton in Surrey on Joan for her life, remainder to his daughter Margaret; it names Joan’s daughters who, if Margaret dies, are to receive legacies from the sale of land in East Peckham: Isabel wife of John Elmbrigge, Amy daughter of Thomas Hextall, and Joan wife of Humphrey Hextall; and it names his daughter Margaret. The will, meticulous in asserting the maternity of Joan’s three daughters by earlier marriages, is silent about Margaret’s maternity. The will describes her only as William’s daughter.
It refrains from identifying Humphrey, alive at the time of its composition, as William’s son and heir and pretty much excludes Humphrey from the will’s provisions. Only is the case of Margaret’s death were Humphrey and his wife Joan to receive lands in Sutton. The will omits any mention of his daughter Joan possibly already married to John Bromley of Badington. Nor does it say anything about William’s lands in Staffordshire, which got careful attention in his last will 24 years later. The 1446 will’s sole mention of Staffordshire is a pious bequest.
This will then looks much more like a marriage settlement, and marriage settlements were usually drawn up at the time of marriage.
This could be read two ways. If William were protecting the interests of Joan’s daughters, its provisions for Margaret might well mean that she too was one of Joan’s daughters.
If William were drawing up a marriage settlement because he had recently married Joan, then Margaret was more likely the daughter of his first wife Margaret. For all that’s said about the early marriage of girls, she was unlikely to have married William Whetenhall at age 8.
[reference: Surrey History Centre LM/2011/40]
d. Margaret named her first daughter Margery. William Whetenhall’s mother’s name was apparently Alice. Margery is not Margaret but neither is it Joan. So far as I can tell, we know the names of four of Margaret’s (surviving) children: Margery, William, Edward, Elizabeth. No names from Joan’s family: Joan, Isabella, Amy (possibly Anna).
e. Heraldry does not offer any clear help. Children of heiresses were entitled to quarter their mother’s arms. William Hextall’s family abounded in children who were heirs of their fathers, mothers, or both:
William Hexstall
*1 William Hexstall married [by ] Margaret Bromley; heir of her brother
Children of William Hexstall and Margaret Bromley:
x. Joan Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Joan Hexstall married -----: John Bromley of Badingon
Children:
x. Isabella Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Isabella Hexstall married -----: William Needham
x. Margery Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Margery Hexstall married -----: John Harper of Rushall
x. Margaret Hexstall; heir of her father and her mother
* Margaret Hexstall married -----: (Sir) William Stanley of Hooton
Children:
x. Margaret Stanley; heir of her mother
* Margaret Stanley married -----: (Sir) Thomas Gerrard
Children of William Hexstall and [Margaret Bromley or Joan -----]
x. Margaret Hexstall; heir of her father [and possibly of her mother]
*1 Margaret Hexstall married -----: William Whetenhall
Children:
x. William Whetenhall; heir of his mother
x. Margery Whetenhall
*2 Margaret Hexstall married -----: (Sir) Henry Ferrers
Children:
x. Edward Ferrers of Baddlesley Clinton; heir of his mother
x. Elizabeth Ferrers
A. C. Fox-Davies sets out the rules of quartering [A Complete Guide to Heraldry (reprint New York, 1993): 547-549] although it’s not clear whether the rules he prescribes are those of the early C20 or those at play in C15. Here’s a summation:
If A is entitled to quarter B and B is entitled to quarter C, then A may quarter B and C or omit them as A wishes, with the exception that A may not quarter earlier arms without quartering the intermediate arms; So:
1) A may quarter B and C
2) A may omit B and C
3) A may quarter B and omit C
4) A may quarter C only if A also quarters B
Accordingly quartering arms represents [a claim to] descent; the absence of quarterings may mean a) no [claim to] descent; b) indifference to descent; or c) ignorance of descent. The absence of quartered arms is thus not itself evidence of absence of descent from an heiress.
The arms here also come from records at least a century later than the people we’re talking about.
[Links to the various county visitations may be found on Chris Phillips’ website: http://medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sources/visitations.shtml]
Were William’s daughter Margaret the daughter of his first wife Margaret Bromley, his daughter’s Whetenhall and Ferrers descendants would be entitled to quarter the Bromley arms. They do not appear to do so.
The Whetenhall arms [Visitation of Kent 1592: 115-116] quarter Hexstall and Hewett but not the Bromley or its quarterings that would follow in order. The Whetenhall arms [Visitation of Kent 1663-1668: 178] likewise quarter Hexstall and Hewett and do in fact go on the quarter the Bromley arms; but they quarter the wrong Bromley arms, those to which Joan’s Hexstall’s husband John Bromley was entitled, not those to which William Hextall’s wife Margaret Bromley was entitled. So the 1663-1668 version of the arms appears in this regard to be padding the eschutcheon.
The Ferrers of Baddesley Clinton [Visitation of Warwickshire 1619: 4] quartered Hexstall and Hewett but not Bromley.
It turns out, however, that the descendants of William’s elder daughter Joan, who were certainly entitled to quarter the Bromley arms did not ordinarily do so, (possibly because they already bore a fuller blazon of the the Bromley arms and its quarterings through their father John Bromley).
The Needham family [Visitation of Cheshire 1580: 184; Visitation of Shropshire 1623: 371] quartered (John) Bromley first where we would expect, then Hexstall and Hewett, but not (Margaret) Bromley again.
The Stanley of Hooton arms [Visitation of Cheshire 1580: 214-216] are those of Sir William Stanley’s descendants by his second wife Agnes Grosvenor. His first wife Margery Hextall’s daughter Margaret married Peter Gerard. Their descendants’ arms quartered Hexstall only.
[J. Paul Rylands, “Notes taken in the Church of Preston, Manchester, Eccles, Winwick, Farnworth, Sephton, and Hale, in the count of Lancaster.....”, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 50 (1898), new series 14: 203-231 at 211]
The Leighs of Rushall who descended from John Harpur and Margery Hexstall did quarter (John) Bromley first, then Hexstall and Hewett, then (Margaret) Bromley again but not her second set of Bromley quarterings. [Visitation of Staffordshire 1583: 101-103] They were the only family to quarter Margaret Bromley’s arms.
The absence of Bromley quartering from the Whetenhall and Ferrers arms, then, is inconclusive. It may represent no descent from Margaret Bromley, or, it may represent simple omission of her arms.
4. Margaret wife of Richard Petit.
Erdeswicke (later 1500s), Bridgeman (1881), and Willmore (1887) all state that Margaret wife of Richard Petit was Margaret Hexstall. Erdeswicke, followed by Bridgeman and Willmore, identifies her as William Hexstall’s daughter. Lambert (1921) argues that she must have been William Hexstall’s sister. Erdeswicke who lived within a hundred years of these people might well have had local knowledge. It may also be that he knew that William Hexstall had a daughter Margaret, that William’s estate at Hexstall and at Millwich had been divided in two and descended to the Bromley and Petit families, and assumed that just as William’s daughter Joan had married John Bromley, William’s daughter Margaret must have married Richard Petit. These are reasonable inferences to make. It could also be that Hexstall and Millwich had already been divided by some conveyance lost to us and that Margaret’s half came to her not from William but from some other family member or someone else altogether.
Sampson Erdeswicke, Survey of Staffordshire, ed. Harwood (Westminster, 1820): 45, 116
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_KrUHAAAAQAAJ/page/n111/mode/2up?q=millwich
George Bridgeman, “History of the Parish of Blymhill”, part I, William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire 1 (1880): 289-384 and 2, part 2 (1881): 67-147 at 105-108
https://archive.org/details/collectionsforhi18812staf/page/n303/mode/2up
Frederic William Willmore, A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood (1887): 143-144
https://archive.org/details/ahistorywalsall00willgoog
Uvedale Lambert, Blechingley, two volumes, (London, 1921): I: 243-246
https://archive.org/details/blechingleyparis01lamb/page/n7/mode/2up
None of the visitations treating the Petit family name Richard Petit’s wife. The only record I can find that does name her is the monumental inscription in Walsall church noted by Willmore above: “Pray for the souls of Richard Petett, and his wife Margaret, and John Petett”. He gives their arms as “A chevron between three bugle horns”. Here it would have been helpful if the monumental inscription had impaled Richard’s wife’s arms as the Hexstall monumental inscriptions do. It looks as though the monumental inscription was put in place by their son John Petit, who, if his mother were not an heiress, would not be entitled to quarter her arms. Were Margaret the sister of the four Hexstall brothers, she would not have been an heiress.
[Petit of Hexstall, Visitation of Staffordshire 1583: 124; Kynnersley of Loxley, Badger, and Cleobury North, Visitation of Shropshire 1623: 300
Richard Petit was of age in 1435 when he paid Roger Elmbrigge and his wife Joan 300 marks of silver for a variety of property in Staffordshire [see above] which would make him roughly William Hexstall’s age. Richard’s son John Petit was active at least from 1457 onward, so he must have born by 1436. He could not have been William Hexstall’s grandson. He was nonetheless constantly a party with the Hexstall brothers to property transactions. At the end his life William Hexstall made John Petit one of the feoffees to whom he entrusted his property. Though there is no definitive evidence, so far as I can see, these circumstances strongly suggest that John Petit was William Hexstall’s close relative, quite probably his nephew.
My impression is, then, that Margaret wife of Richard Petit was William Hexstall’s sister.
[http://medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/abstracts/CP_25_1_116_327.shtml#832 (1457)
Surrey Historical Centre LM/342/16 (1469)]
5. William Hextall’s parents
A number of historians of Kent have repeated the claim that William Hexstall was the son of Richard Hexstall of Hexstall’s Court in the parish of East Peckham, Kent, who had married Anne daughter of heir of Richard Grovehurst. Edward Hasted (1782/1798) is often quoted in this regard. He drew his information from Thomas Philipott (1776).
Edward Hasted: The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent.... (Canterbury, 1798) V: 91-106 and 311-322
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol5/pp91-106
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol5/pp311-322
Thomas Philipott, Villare Cantianum; or Kent Surveyed and Illustrated... (Lynn, 1776): 151, 190
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015030878980&view=1up&seq=1
Ordinarily, it is a simple matter to confirm Hasted, but my efforts to find Richard Hexstall invariably come to naught. For reasons that follow, I think Philipott jumbled his notes and is responsible for the confusion.
He says of the manor of Chartons (page 151): “In times of a lower descent, it was the possession of a good old family called Groveherst. William de Groveherst paid respective aid for it, at the making the Black Prince knight, and from him it devolved to his successor Richard Groveherst, who in the reign of Henry the fourth, determined in three daughters and co-heirs, married to Richard Tickhill, Richard Hextall, and John Petit, who about the beginning of Henry the sixth, passed one moiety of it to John Martin....”
He is clearly referring to a series of documents two generations later involving Ralph Tickhill and his wife Elizabeth, Henry Hexstall and his wife Joan, John Honington and his wife Alice, and John Petit and his wife Agnes. The four wives were the heirs [daughters or sisters] of Richard Grovehurst and his wife Joan. That relationship is set out in an acquittance by Edmund Chymbeham, executor of his brother John Chymbeham to these eight 15 November 1466. The eight were associated about that time in a lawsuit Hexstall vs Rodney 1463-1467. These same heirs demised their inheritance to Thomas Sibill 20 January 1480 [1479/80? 1480/1?] at which point it appears that Henry Hexstall’s wife Joan Grovehurst had died and Alice Grovehurst was now married to Richard Nutward.
[National Archives E 40/5372
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4944125
National Archives C 1/30/20
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7443258
National Archives E/40/5393
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4944146
(The Kynnersley pedigree [Visitation of Shropshire 1623: 300] also notes the marriage of John Petit to Agnes daughter of Richard Grovehurst and Henry Hexstall to Joan Grovehurst.)
Philipott identifies three of the four heirs in these conveyances. For some reason he moved them back two generations or so, omitted the fourth heir, and got Henry Hexstall’s name wrong. It’s likely then that Richard Hexstall of Hexstall’s Court never existed.
William Hexstall’s parents then are to be found in Staffordshire.
As we have already seen, his descendants quartered not only the arms of Hexstall but usually the arms of Hewett as well. This opens two possibilities.
a) The visitations record, in a blurry time frame, that sometime in the C14 Thomas Hexstall married Elizabeth Hewett, daughter of John Hewett and Catherine Bowles and her father’s heir; Catherine Bowles was in turn daughter of William Bowles and Elizabeth Gifford and her father’s heir. The Shropshire visitation suggests that the arms ordinarily described as Hewett [Sable, a chevron engrailed between three owls argent] belonged to William Bowles, so possibly they were passed on as quarterings to the Hewett arms or simply adopted as the Hewett arms.
[Leigh, Rushall, Bowles, etc in the Visitation of Staffordshire 1583: 103-104; Harpur of Rushall in the Visitation of Shropshire 1623: 218]
According to the inquisition post mortem of William Peyto made 18 June 1411 at Stafford, Elizabeth formerly wife of Thomas Hexstall held of him lands in 9s 10d in Great Wyrley, so Thomas Hexstall was dead by then. He might have been dead much earlier. In the spring of 1380 Matilda widow of Hugh Snell brought suit against a number of men for the death of her husband, amongst whom was Thomas Hexstall. The sheriff ordered to arrest him reported that Thomas Hexstall was dead. If it were Elizabeth’s husband who died in 1380, could not have been the father of the four Hexstall brothers. Even if he were dead in 1411, he might not have lived long enough to father the younger Hexstall brothers. They died in 1476, 1486, and 1492-1493.
[http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/19-953/
https://archive.org/details/collectionsforhi14staf_0/page/n325/mode/2up]
I don’t know if matters that the visitations show no children for Thomas Hexstall and Elizabeth Hewett, considering that she was her father’s heir; nor do they assign Thomas Hexstall a location.
b) We have already met two monumental inscriptions in Walsall church. The third is to Hugh Hextall and his wife Isabel. Willmore again: “Pray for the souls of Hugh Hexstall and his wife Isabel.” He gives their arms as Quarterly, 1 and 4 gules, a bend argent, 2 and 3 sable, a fleur de lis argent, impaling Sable, a chevron engrailed, between three owls argent.
Hugh’s wife Isabel thus bore the same arms as Thomas’ wife Elizabeth. Though she does not show up in the visitations, her arms suggest that she belonged to the Hewett family.
Frederic William Willmore, A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood (1887): 143
https://archive.org/details/ahistorywalsall00willgoog
Erdeswicke reports that on Hugo de Hextall held Millwich into the reign of Henry VI and had issue William who married Margaret Bromley. Wedgwood (449-451), who was aware of the Richard Hexstall possibility, also decided that Hugh was the father of both William and Thomas.
Sampson Erdeswicke, Survey of Staffordshire, ed. Harwood (Westminster, 1820): 45, 116
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_KrUHAAAAQAAJ/page/n111/mode/2up?q=millwich
It would be good to have further particulars about Hugh’s tenure of Hextall and Millwich–possibly tax records or manorial records might survive that would sketch in his tenure--yet, even so, he seems the likeliest candidate to be father of the four Hexstall brothers, not least because Hugh and William were buried, or at least memorialised, in the same church.
c) William Hexstall described himself 9 December 1460 as cousin and next heir of Isabel de Hopton late of Ludlow when he released rights in a tenement in Ludlow to Thomas Gryme. The word cousin was broader then than now, so William might have been her nephew or her cousin or even more distant kinsman, but he does say he was her next heir, so most likely Isabel was his paternal aunt or paternal cousin and dead 9 December 1460.
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4947897
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/ancient-deeds/vol4/pp392-401 = Ancient Deed 9138
Isabel may well have been the Isabel daughter and heir of Thomas Hexstall, widow, who sold half a watermill at Millwich to William Bradshaw in 1453-1454. She may well have been the same person as Isabel Hexstall who in Hillary term 1457/8 sued Joan widow of William Birmingham for breaking into her close as Great Barre. William Hexstall himself had sued Joan in Trinity term 1436 twenty years before for exactly the same offense in the same place.
William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, new series, 12 (1909) [= Chetwynd, History of Pirehill Hundred]: 163
https://archive.org/details/newcollectionsfo12stafuoft/page/n3/mode/2up
William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, new series, 4 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1901): 104
https://archive.org/details/collectionsfora13socigoog
William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, new series, 3 (1900): 146
https://archive.org/details/newcollectionsforhi03stafuoft/
If these inferences are correct, then Isabel was likely the daughter and heir of Thomas Hexstall and Elizabeth Hewett. Since both Isabel and William held rights of some sort in both Great Barre and Millwich, it appears that Isabel’s father Thomas Hexstall was the younger brother of William’s father Hugh Hexstall.