COLLECTIONS

F O R A

HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE

EDITED BY SampleCounty

VOLUME VI. N e w Ser ieStudies s. PART II.

“ And in this undertaking, the Reader may see what Furniture (though it lie disperst) our Publick Records will afford for History: and how plentifully our own may be supplied and improved, if pains were taken therein : for what is hitherto made publick, hath been collected, chiefly out of old Annals, and they filled with few things but such as were very obvious, nay the Annalists themselves (for the most part residing in Monasteries) too oftened byass’d with Interest, and Affection, to Times and Persons: But on the contrary, in our publick Records lye matter of Fact, in full Truth, and therewith the Chronological part, carried on, even to days of the Month. So that an industrious Searcher may thence collect considerable matter for new History, rectifle many mistakes in our old and in both gratifie the world with unshadowed verity.”— (Ashmole' s History o f the Garter.)

LONDON: HARRISON AND SONS, ST. MARTIN’S LANE,

1903. A HISTORY

OF

THE FAMILY

StaffordshireOF

. CO. STAFFOBD. SampleCounty

BY Studies MAJOR-GENERAL THE HON. GEO. WROTTESLEY.

Reprinted from “ The Genealogist ” (N ew Series, Vols. xv—xix).

WM. POLLARD & Co. L td ., PRINTERS, NORTH STREET. 1903. PREFACE Staffordshire

I feel I owe an apology to the Members of the Win. Salt Society for introducing into their Proceedings a history of my own family; my excuse for doing so, is the destruction of the Wrottesley muniments by the fire of December 1897, and the fact that the history being a reprint from the pages of The Genealogist, will not throw an undue burden upoo the finances of the Society. After the loss of the family papers in 1897, I proposed to iny friend Mr. Harwood, the Editor of The Genealogist, that he should print the copies which I had taken of the WrottesleySample deeds County in that magazine. To this he replied that he would much prefer a history of the family, introducing the deeds into it, and the following pages are the result of this suggestion. Tip to the date of the fire, the deeds at Wrottesley had been unusually well preserved. When I first began to examine them in 1860, there was a complete series of family documents identifying the successive owners of the propertyStudies from the reign of Henry II down to the above date. All the most important of these as far down as the Tudor era, have been incorporated into the history in their original form. For the encouragement, however, of archaeologists who have to deal with the history of an ancient family which has lost its muniments, I may mention that every step of the pedigree from the reign of Henry II to the. present time is proved by public documentary evidence which is accessible to all the world. This evidence will be found given in detail in the text of the history. It illustrates the value of the Public Records for the elucidation of local ami family history, and the mine of wealth which lies under our feet, which has passed almost unnoticed before the rise of the modern school of archaeology. As the manor ot Wrotteeley was held under a religious house, the origin of the family can be clearly traced from LV. PREFACE. existing monastic records. Lanlrano was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by the Conqueror it* 1(>70, and had ‘or his chaplain one Walter, a monk of Oerisy, in the 1 Hoecee of Bayeux This Walter appears, from subsequent evidence, to have been a member of the Norman family of de V < rdon, which held a large fief in the same Diocese in the neighbour­ hood of Avranches. A Bishop’s Chaplain is predestined to ecclesiastical preferment, and on the death of Agelwin, the last Saxon Abbot of Evesham in 1077, Walter was promoted to the vacant post. According to the chronicle of Evesham, being a young man at the date of his accession and not endowedStaffordshire with much worldly wisdom, he refused to