Whittlewood Westleys
Whittlewood formed part of the 10th century Mercian diocese of Medeshamstede, the greatest of Benedictine houses about Northamptonshire, founded in 655 by the monk Saxulf, who later became bishop of Mercia (died 692). Medeshamstede (see Bede) was refounded as Peterborough Abbey by Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester and handed to Adulf, first abbot of the refoundation, by King Edgar in 972. ‘Peterborough Abbey was, by the Domesday Survey of 1086, the 11th richest monastery in England, and much of its wealth was in land, not only in the area immediately surrounding Peterborough, but much further afield, including London’.
Situated at the junction of three counties Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, medieval Whittlewood embraced ‘multiple estates’ of Whittlebury, Grafton, Paulerspury, Towcester and Greens Norton, together with adjoining Wymersley Hundred, which were held by Wessex royalty. Edward the Elder, son of Alfred-the-Great, built two fortresses when he stayed at Buckingham in 914 on his campaign from 911 against the East Anglian Vikings. In 921, Edward stationed his West Saxon army at Passenham, on the river Great Ouse, while his stronghold at Towcester was being fortified and his son Athelstan held council at Whittlebury in about 930.’
Athelstan in 938 made Guy de Welswe (Wells-way) a theign (Anglo-Saxon earl) heading the ancestry of Sir Herbert Westley (1565) carried through King Alfred the Great’ (849-899) and Cerdic’s lineage from Woden. A community of monks was at Glastonbury under King Ine (Ina) of Wessex (reign 688-726) said to be a 4th great-grandson to King Cerdic of Wessex (ca 466-534) who is 6th great-grandson of Woden (died 55 BCE) the legendary Norse leader, through a son Baeldaeg.
Thus developed about Whittlewood nucleated fields, parochial villages and hamlets, held by the king and aristocracy, whilst prebendaries (canons) of the diocese were beholden to its bishopric aligned with Wessex, whereas the Saxon earl Godwin Wulfnothsson (988-1053) and wife Gytha held Whittlewood, and Azor, Toti's son and Baldwin, Herlwin's son-man Thorgils, held adjoining Buckingham Manor.
Azor and Toti (Tote) were Saxon thanes and housecarls (guards) to King Edward-the-Confessor (1003-1066). Henceforth, Normans established the Benedictine Luffield Priory in the 12th century and in the 13th century the Augustinian Grafton Regis Priory, which returned to the Crown in Tudor times and was later sold-off by Henry VIII in his dissolution of monasteries.
At the Dissolution, Luffield became Crown property and was attached to the Honour of Grafton in 1542. In 1551 this huge amalgamation along with other priory lands were granted to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, whose second son Arthur Throckmorton settled the estate by fine in 1580, and again in 1582, 1596, and 1614. Sir Arthur, who died in 1626, had four daughters of who Ann married neighbouring magnate Sir Peter Temple of Stowe (Stowe Estate) a member of Cromwell’s Parliamentarian army.
Other adjacent landholders to Temples at Stowe were Sir Nicholas Wentworth (1482-1557) with his sons Paul and parliamentarian Sir Peter Wentworth (1529-1596) lords of the manor of Lillingstone Lovell, associated with Throckmorton’s Puritan movement, which involved gentry and clergy; Throckmortons were neighbours at Paulerspury.
Whittlewood was thus tightly held by renowned Elizabethan statesmen, who were allied in Protestantism and supported radical clergy in the Classical Movement of 1580-1590, which advocated presbyterian reforms within the Church of England, culminating in the English Civil War of (1642-1651) between Parliamentarians and Royalists. Lord Robert Dudley (1532-1588) Earl of Leicester born in Oxfordshire became leader of the Puritan party at Elizabeth’s court and was also closely aligned with the Throckmorton dynasty.
Clement Throckmorton (1516-1573) of Haseley in Warwickshire in 1541 served with Sir Richard Rich (1496-1567) with whom he had family connections, while Sir Richard is a great-grandfather to Lord High Admiral Sir Robert Rich (1587-1658) 2nd Earl Warwick, a leading Puritan. Admiral Rich in 1644 procured a diploma of LL.D for his chaplain Dr Samuel Annesley, whom Oliver Cromwell made lecturer of St Paul’s and in 1658 Vicar at St Gile’s Cripplegate in London. Grandfather of the Epworth Wesleys, Annesley was born in 1620 of John Anslye at Kenilworth, close to Throckmorton’s seat of Haseley in Warwickshire.
Sir Herbert Westley’s mother Alice Tracy is a great-granddaughter to Sir Thomas Throckmorton of Coughton (abt 1412-1472) High Sheriff of Warwick and Leicester, while Alice is a 2nd cousin of Clement. Sir Herbert, born ca 1565 son of Walter Westley, is 3rd cousin to Job Throckmorton (Snr) while Job (Jnr) is grandnephew to Ambassador Sir Nicholas Throckmorton (1515-1570) of Paulerspury in Northamptonshire and his brother Clement Throckmorton (1517-1573) of Haseley in Warwickshire, both prominent Puritan MPs in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603).
Warwickshire conjoins both Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire centered about Banbury in Oxfordshire, the seat of William Fiennes 1st Viscount Saye and Sele (1582-1662) of Broughton Castle, who married Elizabeth the daughter of John Temple of Stowe in 1600. Fiennes was a Puritan leader in the House of Lords in opposition to both Stuart kings James and Charles. From 1630 Fiennes, together with other Puritan leaders Robert Greville the 2nd Baron Brooke, John Pym, and Robert Rich the 2nd Earl Warwick, formed the Warwick Patentees to further New England colonisation of America.
William Fiennes is grandson to Richard Fermor (1480-1551) of Easton Neston, near Towcester in Northamptonshire, who ‘owned the hundreds of Towcester and Wymersley when he was attainted (convicted) in 1540 but in 1550 regained lands which placed him among the dozen or so men who benefited most from the redistribution of crown lands’. Wymersley, northernmost in Whittlewood and about Northampton, was a cluster of village sites supplemental to those southward in Cleyley and Stodfold hundreds, which present Westley ancestry derived from medieval Warwick, Oxford and Buckingham estates, with origins in Wiltshire and Dorset.
Associated in their Puritan cause were Sir Francis Walsingham (1530-1590) MP for Lyme Regis in Dorset, who was supported by high statesmen Sir Francis Russell and Sir William Cecil, allowing him considerable influence in England. Walsingham’s sister Mary in 1546 married Sir Walter Mildmay (1523-1589) who had strong Puritan sympathies and in 1584 founded Emmanuel College, which, with Trinity College at Cambridge and Christ Church at Oxford, fostered prominent Puritan clergymen John Field (1545-1588) and Thomas Wilcox (1549-1608) led by Thomas Cartwright of Cambridge (1535-1603) against John Whitgift (1530-1604) Archbishop of Canterbury.
Robert Rich (1587-1658) 2nd Earl Warwick was appointed by King Charles I in 1643 as Lord High Admiral and Governor-in-Chief for American colonies of Virginia, Plymouth, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Rich’s grandson married Oliver Cromwell’s sister Frances and is a grandnephew of Alice Rich, wife of Richard (Robert) White (1540-1600) of South Petherton in Somerset, a 3rd cousin to Reverend John White ‘Patriarch of Dorchester’ (1575-1648) father-in-law of Reverend John Westley of Westleigh in Devon.
Such was the patronage and Puritan religious sympathy afforded Sir Herbert Westley’s family, from links with highly influential aristocratic dynasties Throckmorton, Dudley and Rich of Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire. They embraced not only Whittlewood but like estates throughout Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Wiltshire held by Puritan alliance with the Russell oligarchy of earls and dukes Bedford.
Sir Francis Russell 2nd Earl Bedford (1527-1585) MP for Buckinghamshire was in sympathy with Elizabethan reformers, whose opinions he shared, and was made lord-lieutenant of the counties of Devon, Cornwall and Dorset early in 1558. His son, Lord William Russell 1st Baronet of Thornhaugh (1558-1613) at the time ‘controlled several parliamentary seats, all of which he assigned to friends and relatives who would assist him in promoting his particular cause in government, the Puritan faith’- Dr Peter Toon.
Francis Russell was godfather to Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596) whose cousins are Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) of Hayes Barton in Devon and Sir Richard Grenville (1542-1591) of Buckland Abbey in Devon, were all foundation Puritans. Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick (died 1589) was a brother of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who married Anne, daughter of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford.
This support by Elizabethan statesmen led Puritans in the Classical Movement of 1580-1590 across England’s counties into their principal towns and cities, spreading Protestant Nonconformism to Birmingham, Northampton, Banbury and Bedford, through London, Oxford and Cambridge lectureships.
Anglican theologian Dr Peter Toon (1973) states ‘early Puritanism was only possible because of the support given to them by magistrates and merchants of certain towns as well as the larger patronage offered by such aristocrats as Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford, and Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (whereby) convinced Protestants were strongly placed in the social hierarchies of many shires.’
Modern villages about the ancient Whittlewood Estate include all or part of Grafton Regis, Potterspury, Paulerspury, Roade, Stoke Bruerne, Shutlanger, Blisworth, Yardley Gobion, Passenham, Wicken, Towcester, Tiffield, Dodford and Greens Norton, in Northamptonshire. Luffield Priory held land about Thornborough, Shalstone, Evershaw (Biddlesden), Beachampton, Buckingham, Water Stratford, Lillingstone and Stowe in Buckinghamshire. Paulerspury and Blisworth include descendants of Joseph Westley.
George Westlye was a tenant farmer under copyhold to Heybarne Feylde landlords Wentworth at Lillingstone Dayrell in 1575. He was contemporary to Benjamin Westley who married an Eleanor about 1575 at Lillingstone Dayrell and Richarde Westley who married Ann Iveringham in 1595 at Stowe, forefathers to William, George, and Joseph Westley born in the years 1599 to 1603 at Lillingstone Dayrell.
Walter Westley who died about 1537 at Warwick is considered ancestral to the Westleys of Lillingstone Dayrell, associated with Throckmorton overlords seated in Warwickshire to whom they are kin, as abovenoted related by marriage. Whilst we have no records for immediate descent of Walter, it is fitting to assume that families Westley of Kenilworth, Bishops Ichington and Southam in Warwickshire are grandsons of Walter and cousins of Sir Herbert. They are Edward, John, Henry, Abraham, William, Thomas and Robert, all christened between 1573 and 1584 in Warwickshire.
For example, we trace the genealogy of Littleton Westley, who was christened on 14 November 1750 at Southam in Warwickshire and became Lord of Cosgrove Manor in the Cleley hundred of Buckinghamshire; adjoining Paulerspury in Northamptonshire. Cosgrove was attached to Paulerspury as part of Henry VIII’s grant to Throckmortons.
From Lillingstone Dayrell, progeny of Benjamin, George and Richard Westley dispersed about Buckingham, adding forenames Joseph, Thomas and William at Blisworth, Bugbrooke, Milton Malsor, Piddington, Roade and Tiffield in Northamptonshire, who are affiliated with those in our ancestry at Paulerspury that migrated from Water Stratford in Buckinghamshire. The timeline and evolving lineal descent for these families are listed in my spreadsheet Whittlewood Westleys.xls.
Situated at the junction of three counties Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, medieval Whittlewood embraced ‘multiple estates’ of Whittlebury, Grafton, Paulerspury, Towcester and Greens Norton, together with adjoining Wymersley Hundred, which were held by Wessex royalty. Edward the Elder, son of Alfred-the-Great, built two fortresses when he stayed at Buckingham in 914 on his campaign from 911 against the East Anglian Vikings. In 921, Edward stationed his West Saxon army at Passenham, on the river Great Ouse, while his stronghold at Towcester was being fortified and his son Athelstan held council at Whittlebury in about 930.’
Athelstan in 938 made Guy de Welswe (Wells-way) a theign (Anglo-Saxon earl) heading the ancestry of Sir Herbert Westley (1565) carried through King Alfred the Great’ (849-899) and Cerdic’s lineage from Woden. A community of monks was at Glastonbury under King Ine (Ina) of Wessex (reign 688-726) said to be a 4th great-grandson to King Cerdic of Wessex (ca 466-534) who is 6th great-grandson of Woden (died 55 BCE) the legendary Norse leader, through a son Baeldaeg.
Thus developed about Whittlewood nucleated fields, parochial villages and hamlets, held by the king and aristocracy, whilst prebendaries (canons) of the diocese were beholden to its bishopric aligned with Wessex, whereas the Saxon earl Godwin Wulfnothsson (988-1053) and wife Gytha held Whittlewood, and Azor, Toti's son and Baldwin, Herlwin's son-man Thorgils, held adjoining Buckingham Manor.
Azor and Toti (Tote) were Saxon thanes and housecarls (guards) to King Edward-the-Confessor (1003-1066). Henceforth, Normans established the Benedictine Luffield Priory in the 12th century and in the 13th century the Augustinian Grafton Regis Priory, which returned to the Crown in Tudor times and was later sold-off by Henry VIII in his dissolution of monasteries.
At the Dissolution, Luffield became Crown property and was attached to the Honour of Grafton in 1542. In 1551 this huge amalgamation along with other priory lands were granted to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, whose second son Arthur Throckmorton settled the estate by fine in 1580, and again in 1582, 1596, and 1614. Sir Arthur, who died in 1626, had four daughters of who Ann married neighbouring magnate Sir Peter Temple of Stowe (Stowe Estate) a member of Cromwell’s Parliamentarian army.
Other adjacent landholders to Temples at Stowe were Sir Nicholas Wentworth (1482-1557) with his sons Paul and parliamentarian Sir Peter Wentworth (1529-1596) lords of the manor of Lillingstone Lovell, associated with Throckmorton’s Puritan movement, which involved gentry and clergy; Throckmortons were neighbours at Paulerspury.
Whittlewood was thus tightly held by renowned Elizabethan statesmen, who were allied in Protestantism and supported radical clergy in the Classical Movement of 1580-1590, which advocated presbyterian reforms within the Church of England, culminating in the English Civil War of (1642-1651) between Parliamentarians and Royalists. Lord Robert Dudley (1532-1588) Earl of Leicester born in Oxfordshire became leader of the Puritan party at Elizabeth’s court and was also closely aligned with the Throckmorton dynasty.
Clement Throckmorton (1516-1573) of Haseley in Warwickshire in 1541 served with Sir Richard Rich (1496-1567) with whom he had family connections, while Sir Richard is a great-grandfather to Lord High Admiral Sir Robert Rich (1587-1658) 2nd Earl Warwick, a leading Puritan. Admiral Rich in 1644 procured a diploma of LL.D for his chaplain Dr Samuel Annesley, whom Oliver Cromwell made lecturer of St Paul’s and in 1658 Vicar at St Gile’s Cripplegate in London. Grandfather of the Epworth Wesleys, Annesley was born in 1620 of John Anslye at Kenilworth, close to Throckmorton’s seat of Haseley in Warwickshire.
Sir Herbert Westley’s mother Alice Tracy is a great-granddaughter to Sir Thomas Throckmorton of Coughton (abt 1412-1472) High Sheriff of Warwick and Leicester, while Alice is a 2nd cousin of Clement. Sir Herbert, born ca 1565 son of Walter Westley, is 3rd cousin to Job Throckmorton (Snr) while Job (Jnr) is grandnephew to Ambassador Sir Nicholas Throckmorton (1515-1570) of Paulerspury in Northamptonshire and his brother Clement Throckmorton (1517-1573) of Haseley in Warwickshire, both prominent Puritan MPs in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603).
Warwickshire conjoins both Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire centered about Banbury in Oxfordshire, the seat of William Fiennes 1st Viscount Saye and Sele (1582-1662) of Broughton Castle, who married Elizabeth the daughter of John Temple of Stowe in 1600. Fiennes was a Puritan leader in the House of Lords in opposition to both Stuart kings James and Charles. From 1630 Fiennes, together with other Puritan leaders Robert Greville the 2nd Baron Brooke, John Pym, and Robert Rich the 2nd Earl Warwick, formed the Warwick Patentees to further New England colonisation of America.
William Fiennes is grandson to Richard Fermor (1480-1551) of Easton Neston, near Towcester in Northamptonshire, who ‘owned the hundreds of Towcester and Wymersley when he was attainted (convicted) in 1540 but in 1550 regained lands which placed him among the dozen or so men who benefited most from the redistribution of crown lands’. Wymersley, northernmost in Whittlewood and about Northampton, was a cluster of village sites supplemental to those southward in Cleyley and Stodfold hundreds, which present Westley ancestry derived from medieval Warwick, Oxford and Buckingham estates, with origins in Wiltshire and Dorset.
Associated in their Puritan cause were Sir Francis Walsingham (1530-1590) MP for Lyme Regis in Dorset, who was supported by high statesmen Sir Francis Russell and Sir William Cecil, allowing him considerable influence in England. Walsingham’s sister Mary in 1546 married Sir Walter Mildmay (1523-1589) who had strong Puritan sympathies and in 1584 founded Emmanuel College, which, with Trinity College at Cambridge and Christ Church at Oxford, fostered prominent Puritan clergymen John Field (1545-1588) and Thomas Wilcox (1549-1608) led by Thomas Cartwright of Cambridge (1535-1603) against John Whitgift (1530-1604) Archbishop of Canterbury.
Robert Rich (1587-1658) 2nd Earl Warwick was appointed by King Charles I in 1643 as Lord High Admiral and Governor-in-Chief for American colonies of Virginia, Plymouth, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Rich’s grandson married Oliver Cromwell’s sister Frances and is a grandnephew of Alice Rich, wife of Richard (Robert) White (1540-1600) of South Petherton in Somerset, a 3rd cousin to Reverend John White ‘Patriarch of Dorchester’ (1575-1648) father-in-law of Reverend John Westley of Westleigh in Devon.
Such was the patronage and Puritan religious sympathy afforded Sir Herbert Westley’s family, from links with highly influential aristocratic dynasties Throckmorton, Dudley and Rich of Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire. They embraced not only Whittlewood but like estates throughout Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Wiltshire held by Puritan alliance with the Russell oligarchy of earls and dukes Bedford.
Sir Francis Russell 2nd Earl Bedford (1527-1585) MP for Buckinghamshire was in sympathy with Elizabethan reformers, whose opinions he shared, and was made lord-lieutenant of the counties of Devon, Cornwall and Dorset early in 1558. His son, Lord William Russell 1st Baronet of Thornhaugh (1558-1613) at the time ‘controlled several parliamentary seats, all of which he assigned to friends and relatives who would assist him in promoting his particular cause in government, the Puritan faith’- Dr Peter Toon.
Francis Russell was godfather to Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596) whose cousins are Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) of Hayes Barton in Devon and Sir Richard Grenville (1542-1591) of Buckland Abbey in Devon, were all foundation Puritans. Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick (died 1589) was a brother of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who married Anne, daughter of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford.
This support by Elizabethan statesmen led Puritans in the Classical Movement of 1580-1590 across England’s counties into their principal towns and cities, spreading Protestant Nonconformism to Birmingham, Northampton, Banbury and Bedford, through London, Oxford and Cambridge lectureships.
Anglican theologian Dr Peter Toon (1973) states ‘early Puritanism was only possible because of the support given to them by magistrates and merchants of certain towns as well as the larger patronage offered by such aristocrats as Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford, and Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (whereby) convinced Protestants were strongly placed in the social hierarchies of many shires.’
Modern villages about the ancient Whittlewood Estate include all or part of Grafton Regis, Potterspury, Paulerspury, Roade, Stoke Bruerne, Shutlanger, Blisworth, Yardley Gobion, Passenham, Wicken, Towcester, Tiffield, Dodford and Greens Norton, in Northamptonshire. Luffield Priory held land about Thornborough, Shalstone, Evershaw (Biddlesden), Beachampton, Buckingham, Water Stratford, Lillingstone and Stowe in Buckinghamshire. Paulerspury and Blisworth include descendants of Joseph Westley.
George Westlye was a tenant farmer under copyhold to Heybarne Feylde landlords Wentworth at Lillingstone Dayrell in 1575. He was contemporary to Benjamin Westley who married an Eleanor about 1575 at Lillingstone Dayrell and Richarde Westley who married Ann Iveringham in 1595 at Stowe, forefathers to William, George, and Joseph Westley born in the years 1599 to 1603 at Lillingstone Dayrell.
Walter Westley who died about 1537 at Warwick is considered ancestral to the Westleys of Lillingstone Dayrell, associated with Throckmorton overlords seated in Warwickshire to whom they are kin, as abovenoted related by marriage. Whilst we have no records for immediate descent of Walter, it is fitting to assume that families Westley of Kenilworth, Bishops Ichington and Southam in Warwickshire are grandsons of Walter and cousins of Sir Herbert. They are Edward, John, Henry, Abraham, William, Thomas and Robert, all christened between 1573 and 1584 in Warwickshire.
For example, we trace the genealogy of Littleton Westley, who was christened on 14 November 1750 at Southam in Warwickshire and became Lord of Cosgrove Manor in the Cleley hundred of Buckinghamshire; adjoining Paulerspury in Northamptonshire. Cosgrove was attached to Paulerspury as part of Henry VIII’s grant to Throckmortons.
From Lillingstone Dayrell, progeny of Benjamin, George and Richard Westley dispersed about Buckingham, adding forenames Joseph, Thomas and William at Blisworth, Bugbrooke, Milton Malsor, Piddington, Roade and Tiffield in Northamptonshire, who are affiliated with those in our ancestry at Paulerspury that migrated from Water Stratford in Buckinghamshire. The timeline and evolving lineal descent for these families are listed in my spreadsheet Whittlewood Westleys.xls.