1 2 3 4 5 6 Contents INTRODUCTION 8 My Father's Ancestors: 1. INSLEY 19 2. ECCLESTON 115 3. PITRON 119 4. LE PAGE 126 5. MOURANT 131 6. LE GROS 159 7. LE MAISTRE 176 8. BOYD 188 9. MOREL 197 My Mother's Ancestors: 10. ROBINSON 214 11. WALKER 250 12. WOOD (including MICKLEBURGH) 255 13. RAVENSHAW 307 14. BRITTAIN 319 15. NEAME 324 16. WRIGHT 357 17. GRIX 363 18. TURNER 371 EPILOGUE 376 INDEX 379 7 Introduction I have found on several occasions that when some people start their research into their family history and begin to make some headway in tracing their forebears, that they then become fascinated with the idea that they may be descended from an old noble family and that they may be entitled to use an old "Coat of Arms" and Family Crest. I have often smiled at the thought that there should be so many individuals whose grandparents or great grandparents, or earlier forebears, should have turned their backs upon their noble families and that Armorial Bearings were there waiting to be "claimed". My own interest in my forebears started when a retired Schoolmaster, Francis Pimblett Insley, noticed in 1955 the announcement of my engagement to Jane Goldsmith which had been placed by her parents in the Daily Telegraph. That announcement included my parents' address and "FPI", as we came to know him, wrote to my father to tell him of his own interest in researching his own family forebears and asking whether my father had any information which might be helpful to him. As a result of that letter I began to seek information about our INSLEY forebears, beyond the details which were provided for us by our elderly great aunts and great uncles who were then living in Bournemouth. It was my great uncle Ernest (born in 1879) who was the seventh of ten children, who wrote to provide information about his father, who had been born in Warwickshire in 1834 and who had been the first of the family to go to St.Malo in Brittany (in 1860) to start an export business. That export business was to continue until the arrival of the German armed forces early in June 1940. Over the following ten years or so FPI and I worked together to try to trace our respective branches of the family and wondered whether we might even be distantly related. Those were the days before the "explosion" of interest in family history research and before the IGI was widely available. The International Genealogical Index, or the "IGI" as it is usually known, has been produced by the Church of Latter Day Saints, the "Mormon Church". After obtaining approval for the micro-filming of old parish registers they then produced indexes of marriages and baptisms in most of the old parishes in Great Britain, the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Those have since been followed by the filming of other old records held by Non- Conformist churches in this country as well as other records in other countries. As copies of the IGI became available for purchase by County Record offices and private individuals this greatly helped those who were interested in researching their ancestors. The whole process "snowballed" and old County Records, which had previously not been available for general research by members of the public were also made available on microfilm and microfiche. FPI and I were not to find any direct link between our two branches, although ultimately I suppose that such a link may well have existed. FPI was one of those who would dearly have liked to trace his descent back to a noble family. At the beginning of 1956 he wrote to The College of Arms asking that a search should be carried 8 out to see whether Armorial Bearings had in the past been granted to a member of the INSLEY family. On 23rd.January 1956 Robin de La Lanne-Mirrlees, "Rouge Dragon", wrote to FPI to report upon the result of the search which he had arranged to be carried out. There was a record of a Visitation in Leicestershire in 1682, which gives the pedigree of HENSSLIE or INSLEY having an Irish extraction. He provided a copy of the Arms, which had appeared in Nichols History of Leicestershire in Volume IV on page 272. Captain Richard HENSSLIE, or INSLEY, had three sons and two daughters. The first son, Thomas, married twice. By his first wife he had one son who died unmarried and three daughters. He then married Catherine, the widow of Gabriel ABBOT, by whom he had two more daughters and a son, Gabriel, but Gabriel, in his turn only had three daughters. Richard's second son, also Richard, died unmarried and the third son, Simon, had three daughters and no sons. It is, thus, documented that the male descent from Captain HENSSLIE had died out and it was clear that neither FPI, nor any other INSLEY, could have been descended from him by male descent! Rouge Dragon told FPI that he had also carried out other searches but had found no record of a pedigree of the name of INSLEY, nor any support for the falcon's head crest which had been mentioned by my great uncle Ernest INSLEY! Rouge Dragon concluded his letter to FPI by explaining that in order to have the right to use Armorial Bearings it is usually necessary to possess a pedigree in the Official Records of the College of Arms showing the direct male line of descent from an ancestor already appearing in those records as being officially entitled to Arms. FPI decided at that stage to "drop" these enquiries as Rouge Dragon had also told him that the only way forward would be to arrange for a petition to be made to the Earl Marshall, the Duke of Norfolk, which seemed to be a very expensive procedure! Ever since FPI sent me this information I have sought to dissuade others who had vague visions of being able to prove their descent from a noble family and thus entitled to use an old Coat of Arms. In those days when FPI first wrote to me - 1955 - I was about to be married but even so I was willing and able to become involved in some correspondence and visits to parish vestries to look at the old registers, which were generally still held by the Vicars in those days. Over the next few years my growing family took up more and more time and my job also became more demanding so that the time which I was willing to devote to "family history research" was quite limited. From time to time, however, I picked up bits of information and wrote to, and received letters from, others who were also researching their INSLEY family forebears. It was, however, really a case of putting any such letters into an old file - not quite an "old shoe box!" - and promising that one day I would try to sort them all out. After 1982, when I obtained copies of some of the IGI, I was able to look at these but even then I was not willing to devote sufficient time to this latent hobby. The "sorting out" did not really happen until I retired at the end of 1989, 35-years later! I decided to give myself a retirement present - a small PC - and started to learn how to type, with about four or five fingers! 9 It was at this stage that I realised that I had actually gathered quite a lot of information over the years about the INSLEYs whose names appeared in various old records as well as the IGI, in addition to those particular members of the family who are, in one way or another, connected to my particular branch. Those details are available to any others who are researching their own branches of the family if they care to write to me. Those names are NOT referred to in this book, which is intended to be the Story of my own branch only. As I have already mentioned, my great uncle Ernest, who was the seventh of ten children, had written a letter in 1956 giving me information about the time which his father, Edward, (1834- 1917) had spent in the United States of America a hundred years earlier, when he had made his fortune - and when his partner had then "lost" it, whilst Edward was on a visit back to his parents in Warwickshire. "Uncle Ernest" had also then recorded the story of his father's later decision to start an export business in St.Malo. I had also had "passed down to me", by my mother, some notes which her father had made after his retirement as the Director of Railways in South West Africa (now Namibia) in 1922, in which he had recorded details of his career as a railway engineer in South Africa between 1897 and 1920. My grandmother had also left the Gold Medal and Illuminated Award with which she was presented at the direction of the Shah of Persia in 1893, which now hangs on the wall of my study, the story of which I tell in the ROBINSON FAMILY STORY. Details of another branch of my forebears, the WOOD family of Shropshire, had also been "left" to me by a favourite old great aunt (in truth a "cousin", not an aunt) which was in the form of "family trees" which had been prepared by an (un-named) American cousin at some time during the 1930s.