or some public commission, in different counties in his province." We get on much surer ground when we come to the wellknown visitation of the northern counties begun by Thomas Tonge, Norroy, on the 7th August, 1530. There appear to be no fewer than five manuscripts of this visitation in the College of Armst and two in the British Museum. The two chief manuscripts are Heralds' College D. 4, which is said to be the original, and Harl. MS. 1499 (12), which is said to be the official copy. Tonge's visitation is also in print, for it was carefully edited from the Harl. MS. 1499, by the late Mr. W. H. D. Longstaffe, a well-known northern antiquary, and was published by this Society as number 41 of its series of volumes. Tonge's visitation included Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire, and Nottinghamshire. The working area of the Surtees Society extends over only the first five of the counties above mentioned, and they are spoken of in this book as the northern counties. The visitations, not only of Nottinghamshire, but also of the remaining counties, namely Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire, comprised in the province of Norroy, have been dealt with, wholly or in part, by other societies,§ and our main attention must be confined to the usual area of this Society's labours. Speaking then of the northern counties in the restricted sense above defined, the next extant and recorded visitation, after Tonge's visitation in 1530, is that by William Harvey, Norroy, in 1552, which is printed in the first section of this volume. It does not follow, however, that there were no other visitations, or heraldic collections of pedigrees, made in the northern counties between 1530 and 1552. In that period, between the reigns of Tonge and Harvey, there were four intermediate Norroy kings of arms. They were Thomas Hawley, appointed in 1534; Christopher Barker, who was appointed in 1536, and only held the office for one month; William Fellows, appointed in 1536; and Gilbert Dethick, who was appointed in 1546, and was succeeded by Harvey in 1550. *Noble, op. cit., app. p. xxi. + Heralds' College, D. 4, E. 6, E.D.N. 4, and Vincent, 163. British Museum, Harl. MS. 1499 (12), and Cottonian MS. Plutarch, LVII 1, fol. xli, b. § There is a list of printed visitations relating to the above counties, as published by the Harleian Society, the Chetham Society, and other agencies, in Dr. Marshall's Notes on the Heralds' Visitations, in the Genealogist, new series, vols. 1, 2, and 3, and see Lea, Genealogical Research in England, Scotland and Ireland (Boston and London, 1906). * Thomas Hawley, on the 2nd August, 1534, executed, as Norroy, the deed before alluded to, by which he agreed to share with Wriothsley, Garter, the profits of interments, confirmations, and gifts of arms in the north province, and in the same year he confirmed from London, as Norroy, the gift made by Henry, Earl of Northumberland, to Sir Reginald Carnaby, of an augmentation of his arms and crest, for services rendered by the latter in Scotland.† Although Hawley does not appear as Norroy in the usual lists of kings of arms, it is clear from the above facts that he held that office, but there is no indication that either he or Christopher Barker, who followed him, ever visited the north. It is otherwise with their successors, William Fellows and Gilbert Dethick. According to Leake's report, already mentioned, it was in 1542 that the first commission to visit was granted to a king of arms of the northern province. Fellows was Norroy in that year, and, as he remained in office until 1546, it is probable that he executed the commission granted to him, and that he made a visitation of the northern counties which has since been lost. In September, 1547, Gilbert Dethick, Norroy, was sent from London to Scotland on a mission to the Queen Dowager and Council of Scotland.§ So soon as he had accomplished his mission, and, apparently, on his way back to London, he granted arms to many men in the north, and it is probable that at the same time he recorded their pedigrees. Some of the dates and names of the grantees of these gifts of arms are as follows: : 3rd November, 1547, Henry Anderson, of Newcastle- 9th November, 1547, Matthew Meir, of the north. 6th April, 1548, John Baker of Morpeth in Northum- 15th May, 1548, Sir Ralph Leycester of Tofte in Cheshire. 17th May. 1548, Christopher Ashton of Croston in Lancashire. 18th May, 1548, Sir George Conyers, knight, of Durham (crest). 1st July, 1548, John Fleetwood, of the County of Lancaster. * Ante, p. xxiii. The patent of confirmation is printed in the New History of Northumberland, vol. x. p. 408. + Ante, p. xvi. § Calendar State Papers, Scotland, vol. 1, p. 66. By the 15th December, 1548, Gilbert Dethick had returned to London, for his grant of that date to George Dakins of the county of York is dated at London, and another grant of the same year, of which the day and month are not given, namely, that to Hugh Partridge, residing in the north parts, is also dated in London.* Gutch, in his notes to Anstis's List of Visitations, states that when an army was constantly kept on the Marches (of Scotland), the heralds were frequently sent as attendants on embassies and other special affairs, and took these opportunities of obtaining patents for making their itineraries,† an observation that may have been applicable to the aforesaid mission of Gilbert Dethick, as well as to the missions of Harvey and Dalton hereinafter mentioned. The probability, above stated, that both Fellows and Gilbert Dethick made visitations of the north, or collections of north country pedigrees, is supported by the certainty that visitations or heraldic collections of pedigrees of the north, were made, not only before Tonge's time, but also between Tonge's termination of office as Norroy in 1534 and Gilbert Dethick's termination of the same office in 1550. Mr. Longstaffe published, as an appendix to his edition of Tonge's visitation, a roll of arms, copied by Sir Marmaduke Constable in 1558, out of an old roll of the visitation of the northern province. He (Mr. Longstaffe) extracted it from the Lansdowne MS. 205, folio 235, and entitled it Constable's Roll. It contains no fewer than three hundred and fifty names of men prominent in Yorkshire and Northumberland in the first half of the sixteenth century, and that is a slightly larger total than the number of pedigrees in the Norcliffe manuscript, printed in the sixteenth volume of the Harleian Society's publications. It will be shown hereafter that the Norcliffe manuscript did not merely contain, as assumed by its editor, Flower's visitation of 1563-4, but was an ingathering also of many visitations and collections of pedigrees made by previous heralds.§ In the same way, the Old roll of the visitation of the province' from which Constable extracted, in 1558, his roll of arms, must have been the result of the labours of several heralds, for an examination of its contents 1359 *The above grants are taken from the British Museum, Harl. MS. + Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, vol. 2, p. 253. Surtees Society publ., vol. 41, appendix I. § See post in this introduction under the sub-title The Norcliffe MS., Harleian Society's publ., vol. xvi.' shows that the pedigrees it records were made at intervals extending over many years. For instance, it contained, on the one hand, the pedigrees of Sir Thomas Wortley, of Wortley, whose will was proved on the 12th March, 1514, of Roger Eyre, whose will was proved on the 9th October, 1516, and of Sir Richard Bassett of Fled borough, whose will was proved on the 11th May, 1525. On the other hand, it contained the pedigree of Robert Middleton of Belsay in Northumberland, whose father, Thomas Middleton, of Belsay, fatally wounded at Ancrum Moor, did not die until the 8th March, 1545, when he left the said Robert Middleton, then aged sixteen, his eldest son and heir. It also contained the pedigree of Sir Reginald Carnaby, entered after he obtained the augmentation to his arms in 1534, and before his death in 1543. It included (as does the collection comprised in 16 Harl. Soc.) practically the whole of Tonge's work of 1530, but it also contained early sixteenth century pedigrees of many other families of distinction in the north, who do not re-appear in extant visitations until the seventeenth century. . In the second half of the sixteenth century new regulations were made, both in Mary's reign* and in that of Elizabeth,† for insuring that the records of the heralds should be deposited in the College of Arms. Notwithstanding those regulations, we find that Flower, Norroy, looked upon the old recordes of thoffyce of Norrey' as the private property of the kings of arms (p. 204), that Sir William Dethick, Garter, is alleged to have conveyed eighteen folio volumes of the best books of the College into his private study, and never to have restored them, and that Cooke, Clarenceux, is said to have made many profitable visitations, for which he received his fees, but of which he never entered the results in the books of the College.§. *State Papers, Elizabeth, 1601-3, with Addenda, 1547-1565. Addendum, p. 436, Order of 26 Dec., 1554. + The Earl Marshall's Order of 13 July, 1568, set out in Edmondson, vol. 1, p. 143 et seq. Edmondson, vol. 1, p. 150n. : §'It is recorded by W. Segar, Somerset, afterwards Garter, that Cooke, Clar made many profitable visitations, both by hymself and his deputyes, whoe, notwithstanding they were well entertayned, feasted and richly rewarded by the gent of ye cuntrey, hath left no memory of them in the Generall Office. These were upon deceasse attached by arrests, alienated and sould. Two Norroys Kinges of Armes, two Windesors, Richmond, Lancaster, Somersett and Yorke, deceassed, have done the like to the great sclaunder and decaye of the office and officers present.' British Museum, Cott. MS. Faustina F. 1, fo. 263, copied in B. M. Add. MS. 37147, fol. 2. (Foster MS.) In the first half of that century, before those regulations were made, and when visitations themselves were more desultory and fragmentary, the leakage was greater still, and many heraldic manuscripts compiled during that period appear to be entirely lost. The result is that only the ninety north country families comprised in Tonge's visitation of 1530, can prove descent by means of any college record made prior to Harvey's visitation of 1552. although, as we gather from the wording of Constable's Roll, no fewer than three hundred and fifty families had then been visited. The foregoing observations on visitations in general, heraldic arms, and earlier visitations of the north, have now cleared the way for a description of the manuscript lately brought to light, which is designated in this volume as MS. Anstis, C. 9. THE MANUSCRIPT ANSTIS, C. 9. It has been usual and convenient in writing on visitations, to enumerate them by separate counties, even where, as in the earliest visitations of Benolte and Tonge, they extended over more counties than one. Taking Yorkshire separately, we find that heraldic writers of comparatively recent times, including Marshall, Norcliffe, and Foster,* have stated that there were in all five visitations of that county, and that they have all been printed and published as follows: (1) 1530. Tonge, in Surtees Society publ. vol. 41. In Foster's Visitations of Yorkshire. (5) 1664-5. Dugdale, in Surtees Society publ. vol. 36. Heraldic writers of a century ago, including Noble and Moule,† mention also a visitation of Yorkshire and Northumberland made by William Harvey in 1552, and another visitation of those two counties made by Lawrence Dalton in 1558. All the references to Harvey's and Dalton's visitations come from one source, namely, a list by Anstis, Garter, of "The names of the heralds who have visited the counties of England and Wales, in what year, and where the originals *Marshall, Genealogist, n. 5, vol. 3, p. 113; Norcliffe, 16, Harleian Society publ. preface, p. i; Foster, Visitations of Yorkshire, preface, p. x. + Noble, History of the College of Arms, app. p. xxxiv; Moule, Bibliotheca Heraldica, p. 602. |