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© 2015 Christy K Robinson
Medieval and Tudor-era women, unless they're royal or
aristocratic (and even then...), are often forgotten when it comes to a surname
or history, or where they were buried.
The Eyres/Ayers of Wiltshire were no exception. Generations
of Eyres lived in the villages of Urchfont and Wedhampton, Wiltshire, only a
mile apart. Urchfont has a lovely church, St. Michael and All Angels, but I
can't find record of the Eyres being buried in it (though some of them must
certainly lie under the floor slabs). I visited the church in 2006.
Records on the Eyres go back to 1221, when Humphrey LeHeyr was born--a good 30
years after he supposedly accompanied Richard I the Lionheart on Crusade. (Seriously,
people really need to look at some timelines before they write that
stuff!)
Urchfont and Wedhampton lie on the Salisbury Plain near
Devizes, north of Sarum and Salisbury, and not far from the prehistoric sites
of Woodhenge, Stonehenge, West Kennet Long Barrow, and Silbury Hill.
There was a church at Urchfont from 900AD, the time of King
Alfred and his Queen Aelswith, but the present building began early in the
reign of King Henry III, about 1220. The tower was built in the latter 1400s,
within the lifetime of Juliana Cockerel Eyre.
After Humphrey LeHeyr, we have this succession of
descendants:
- Galfridus LeHeyr, b. 1250 in Wiltshire
- Galfridus LeHeyr, b. 1285 in Wiltshire
- John le Eyre, b. 1325 in Wedhampton who married Eleanor Crooke, heiress of Urchfont
- Simon Eyre, b. 1364 who may or may not be the same man who was Mayor of London and founded Leadenhall Market.
- Thomas Eyre, b. 1399
- William Eyre, b. 1444 in Wedhampton who married Juliana/Johana Cockerel, b. 1444.
- John Eyre, b. 1478
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| St. Michael and All Angels church, Urchfont, Wiltshire, UK. Photo by Christy K Robinson |
William and Juliana had two sons, one of whom is my
ancestor, John Eyre. Juliana, as far as I know, was not nobly born or notorious for her words or deeds; she was a wife and mother from Wedhampton, Wiltshire.
The other son was nameless, and isn't mentioned in genealogy records, so I and probably many others assumed he died young, forgotten, with no heirs.
The other son was nameless, and isn't mentioned in genealogy records, so I and probably many others assumed he died young, forgotten, with no heirs.
But I found the other
son, and it explains why, of all the Eyres, only Juliana Cockerel Eyre was
buried in Christchurch Priory, 49 miles due south, on the chalk-cliffs coast of
England. Their other son was named William after his father, and he was a man
of the Church. William was born in 1478, and he was firstborn.That sets up the questions for which we have no answer:
- Why the firstborn son instead of the younger son? Usually, the firstborn would inherit a double portion of the parents' estate, and a subsequent son would enter the military or monastic life.
- Was William a promising scholar who would benefit with a Church education?
- Was he gay (closeted, of course) and not likely to produce an heir for the Eyre line? His brother John is the ancestor of countless thousands in UK and America.
- Did William's father do something wrong and feel the need to sacrifice his firstborn son to monasticism of the Church, and be a link to prayers for the parents for a lifetime? When a child or young person, male or female, was dedicated to the Catholic Church, they usually came with a dowry or large gift to benefit the monastery or nunnery. The larger the gift, the larger the chance the child would be destined to be an administrator with power: an abbot or prior, an abbess or Mother Superior, or perhaps a bishop.
The web page, transcribed from an old book, says
In addition to the monuments
already noted there are a good many floor slabs with incised inscriptions,
originally filled in with black composition. The oldest of these are in Gothic
capitals, and there is such a strong resemblance between a number of them in
treatment and in the peculiar form of the inscription as to make it probable
that they belong to one date, although commemorating persons of different
periods. Several of them belong to priors of the house, others to lay persons.
The best preserved inscriptions run thus:—
'Tumba
dni Wilhelmi Eyer vicesimi qũrti prioris huius ecclesie qui obiit vio die mēsis
decembris anno domini Milleno ccccc . . .o cuius anime propicietur deus. amen.'
['Tomb of lord William Eyer formerly
of this church, who had died the 21st day of December in the year 1520. . .o
may God bless his soul. Amen.']
Close to Prior Eyre's gravestone is that of his mother: -
'Hic
jacet Johaña Cokrell mater Wilhelmi Eyer prioris huius ecclesie cuius anime
propicietur deus. amen.' ['Here lies Johaña Cokrell the mother of Willelmi
Eyer the prior of this church of which may God bless his soul. Amen.']
Because the book didn't provide a translation of the Latin, I translated William's inscription several times using
Google Translate, which returned variants, which I averaged.
Five-hundred-year-old vernacular Latin wording won't be much like a modern computer
translation, nor classical Latin.
Juliana lived long enough to see her son elected prior,
which must have made her extremely proud. Does her inscription "of which
may God bless his soul" mean
that Prior William desired her prayers for him, from her place in heaven? Or
does it mean that once she went to heaven, her soul became male? That was the
belief of some people at the time.
I had already combed through the Christchurch Priory website
to find their virtual tours, and found 360-degree still pictures of the Great Choir
and the choir aisles (hallways around the outside of the choir). There are
floor burial slabs in both north and south aisles. Juliana and her son the
prior (who died 17 years after she did) would have been buried in the floor of
one of those choir aisles.
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| Screenshot courtesy of http://www.christchurchpriory.org/fabric-history/virtualtour.html |
In medieval terms, it was a prime burial spot because your
grave would be close to all masses said in the chancel, and close to any saint
relics the church might have. If you gave property to the church, or your
surviving family did, the prayers and masses said, and candles lit, might help
your soul out of purgatory sooner. The monks or priests frequently saw your
tomb, effigy, brass, or slab, and remembered to pray for your soul.
"One thing have I
desired of the Lord, which I will require; even that I may dwell in the house
of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and
to visit his temple."
And look: here we are, 500 years later, thinking about
Juliana Cockerel Eyre. If you're her descendant, why not light a candle wherever you are, and say
a prayer.
"I AM the
resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he
were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall
never die."
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| The Christchurch nave, looking east to the stone choir screen behind which lies the Great Choir built by Prior William Eyre. He died in 1520, nineteen years before the Dissolution. Henry VIII had the monastery torn down, but the church was allowed to stand as a parish church. It's larger than 20 of England's cathedrals. One might suspect that the people of Christchurch paid a very large ransom to keep their church from destruction. |
Seventy-five years later, the Eyre descendants placed
alabaster memorials high on the south walls of St. Thomas Beckett
Church, almost in the
shadow of Salisbury Cathedral. By this time, they were prosperous merchants,
Members of Parliament, and Salisbury
mayors in the Elizabethan era, and they may have been Puritan, since the memorial
inscriptions say they “hated idolatry.” Several generations after that, a
branch moved to the oh-so-Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony and settled near Salem
(where a descendant, Mary Ayer
Parker, was hanged as a witch in 1692), then moved south to New Jersey. From the Reformation in the
early 16th century, they were Protestant all the way: Anglican,
Puritan, Baptist, and Seventh Day Baptist.
If you enjoy life sketches, anecdotes, and historical details like these, you can find them in the book Effigy Hunter, by Christy K Robinson. It's available in print from Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
If you enjoy life sketches, anecdotes, and historical details like these, you can find them in the book Effigy Hunter, by Christy K Robinson. It's available in print from Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
Christy K Robinson is the author of five-star nonfiction and fiction historical books, as well as author of Rooting for Ancestors and William and Mary Barrett Dyer websites. You will find her books at http://bit.ly/RobinsonAuthor.
·
We
Shall Be Changed (2010)
· Mary Dyer Illuminated (2013)
· Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (2014)
· The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport (2014)
· Effigy Hunter (2015)
· Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)
· Mary Dyer Illuminated (2013)
· Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (2014)
· The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport (2014)
· Effigy Hunter (2015)
· Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)
Fascinating historical information. I'm glad you attached it to my ancestors in FamilySearch. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAwesome information, very helpful to validate my research. Thank you for putting this together and sharing it!
ReplyDeleteFirstly, congratulations on your site, which I've only just discovered. We share a lot of medieval ancestors. I've only traced these in the last few years, and that was through finding online wills, which showed ancestry through the 17th century Agatha Eyre: most of the Derbyshire Eyres were Roman Catholic right into the 19th century, so church records are sparse.
ReplyDeleteThis is an introduction, by an Irish clergyman (Hartigan) a century ago, to his book on the Eyres of Co Galway (in this case borrowed from rootingforancestors.blogspot.com):
"The family came into England with William the Conqueror. Tradition tells us that William was flung from his horse at the battle of Hastings, and that his helmet was beaten into his face, which a Norman soldier, named Truelove, pulled off, and horsed him again.
The Duke, in return for this service, told him, "Thou shalt hereafter from Truelove be called Eyre, because thou hast given me the Air I breathe." After the battle, the Duke, on enquiry respecting him, found him sorely wounded, his leg and thigh struck off.
He ordered him the utmost care, and on his recovery gave him lands in Derbyshire for his services, and leg and thigh in armour cut off, for his crest.
Now it strikes one at once as a strange thing that a Norman soldier should bear the purely Saxon name of Truelove.
The name Eyre*, under one form or the other, still exists in Normandy, and though the incident may be true, I doubt very much as to Truelove being the name of the ancestor of the Eyre race.
The Eyres are found in the Parish of Hope and Hassop in Derbyshire before the time the name appears in the History of Wilts; perhaps some unrecorded member of the family may have migrated from Derbyshire to the South of England, and so have been the origin of the Wilts family. I think, however, that it is probable that there was more than one Eyre present on the field of Hastings, and that Eyre, of Wilts, starts from a perfectly independent source from that of Derbyshire, if it had started from a cadet of the Derbyshire family, surely before now the connection would have been found. The first mention of the family in Wiltshire that we find is
Humphrey Le Heyr, of Bromham, Wilts, he was a Crusader, and accompanied Richard I. to the Holy Land. He married Gallicia, and her name appears in an undated deed, probably in the reign of Henry 3rd, granting to her son, Nicholas, some land. To this deed Richard of Bridwilston, Roger Le Blount, and William Le Blount were witnesses."
Some of the logic of this is very Irish indeed -two Eyres wandering about the same battlefield minus a leg? Another form of the tale has a disarmed knight picking up someone else's severed leg to use as a weapon. Anyway, the same crest was used by other Derbyshire ancestors, the Foljambes, who linked it to the 2nd part of their name, despite the fact that they seem to have been originally 'de Folchamps'.
In support of the supposed link between the Derbyshire and Wiltshire Eyres, both begin with the forms 'le Eyr' or 'le Heyr', perhaps referring to their role as hereditary foresters of the royal Peak Forest. They are reputed to have had a connection with William Peverel and Peveril Castle, above Castleton village in the Hope Valley. But that just begs more questions about the other Peverel families in the South of England, who may or may not have been related, and the possibility that William was actually another bastard son of William the Conqueror.
Anyway, thanks again for your blogs.
Geoffrey
Dore, Sheffield, UK.
Thank you for your remarks, Geoffrey. I've written a long-ish article on the Ayer/Eyre family at https://rootingforancestors.blogspot.com/2019/04/ayers-miraculous-survival-of-family-line.html if other readers are interested.
DeleteThe Truelove name. There's so much mythology going on there that it's obscured fact. I suspect that little anecdote was a Romantic invention of some 19th-century novelette writer.
You and I have read some of the same historical genealogy accounts. The one I cite often is the one you mentioned about the Wiltshire Humphrey le Heyr who fought on crusade with Richard I, 30 years *before* Humphrey was born. (You can't see me, but I'm raising a sardonic eyebrow.)
I'm also curious to know how a man who had his leg cut off above the knee in 1066 didn't die of blood loss on the battlefield, let alone of massive infection if he was rescued and his artery cauterized. Maybe he suffered a serious wound and was disabled, but losing his leg entirely? Not seeing the probability of that anecdote, either.
Those sorts of stories--and unraveling them--make history research all kinds of fun, though, don't you think? Thanks again for writing!
Christy