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Abstracts of Wills, 1484-1798 and Legal Proceedings, 1560-1700, Relating to Early Virginia Families
by Noel Currer-Briggs
With an added
Preface to the American Edition
Three Volumes in One
Volume I:
Abstract of Wills, 1784-1798
Butler Center, Little Rock, Arkansas F225.C96; 1970
Preface to the American Edition
Volume 1 and II contain abstracts of more than a thousand wills, covering the period from 1484 to 1798. Volume I consists of wills of more than one hundred and thirty English families. Alongside the English wills in Volume II is a collection of Virginian County Records. Volume III contains legal proceedings from Virginia Courts and contains an index of more than twelve thousand names and places mentioned in the documents in this collection.
Documents will be found in the collection which refer to a second Moundeford Kirby, a second Thomas Kirby, Roger, Edmund and Symon all living in Virginia near York County between 1665 and 1700. The names Edmund and Symon occur often in the Moundeford family in Norfolk, England, while Roger is one of the most persistently recurring names in the Kirby family in Norfolk and Lancashire. there is strong evidence to suggest, but no definite proof, that all were close relatives, if not the sons of the emigrant Thomas by his first marriage.
London
November, 1969.
page 8
(broxburne and secondly to a woman)
… Francis Kirby refers to a cousin – Maurice Thompson – whose brothers George, Paul and William are known to have gone to Elizabeth City, Virginia, in 1623 in the ship “George”… and are recorded in the 1624/5 Census of the Living and the Dead, which was ordered after the Great Indian Massacre of 1622…
page 9
… By checking the English and American sources it emerged that out of one hundred and twenty people who sailed to Virginia in the “Bona Nova” in 1620, nearly a quarter were bound for Elizabeth City. This is very close to the area of York County in which Thomas Kirby settled.
… Edward Kirby was part-owner of a ship called the “james”, of 180 tons, whose master then was James Gray, and that she was on a voyage from Newcastle to Blakeney in Norfolk…
From this village (Henham) came other emigrants families to Virginia, among them the Eltonheads, Edward Eltonhead … three of whom married prominent Virginian planters …
page 10
relationships established:
family from Egerton, Kent
2nd Earl of Warwick (Puritan leanings and wide financial interests)
Devereux family, Earl of Essex
Thomas West, 3rd Lord de la Warr, Governor of Virginia (d. 1618), whose mother was Ann Knollys …
link established with South Yorkshire.
From the area round Doncaster and Rotherham came a number of families with interests in Virginia: Viccars, Adams, Bosville, Wormeley, Popeley, Rolston and Copley families were among whom were to be found some of the largest planters in that part of Virginia in which Thomas Kirby settled. The elder Rich, 1st Earl o Warwick was an enormously wealthy man…
names listed that had interests in the colonies, and the majority plantations in York County or Elizabeth City County…
page 11
Earl of Warwick, (as Robert Rich), accompanied Sir Henry Wootton’s embassy to Turin in 1612…
… South Yorkshire group of families mentioned…
relationships from Yorkshire … Margaret Copley, the mother of Robert Greville, Lord Brooke. She was also distantly related through her grandmother Alice Viccars, with the Earls of Warwick…
page 12
On the way back in 1635, he (Wormeley) called in at Elizabeth City, and during this brief stay in Virginia sold a pinnace to William Claiborne… Among his neighbours was another Yorkshireman, Lionel Rolston. Lionel Rolston came to Elizabeth City in the God’s Guifte” in 1523 at the age of twenty-nine…
Another of Thomas Kirby’s sisters, Ann, married William Bourn of Greenstead, Essex, and their daughter Ann, was the wife of William Strachey, whose father, also william Strachey, is famous for the report he sent to the Earl of Southampton after the wreck of the “Sea Venture” on the Somers Island reefs in 1609…
page 13
… Elizabeth City County records showed that in 1628 a certain Roger Saunders sued Richard Popeley for the payment of a bond of 400 pounds. ..
… At the same time as this court order was made against Popeley, the court at Jamestown issued a commission to set up a monthly Court to be held at Elizabeth City. This was to consist of, among others, a Lieutenant Edward Waters and Lionel Rolston, whose name has already been mentioned. Edward Waters, who had left England in the ill-fated “Sea Venture” expedition reached Virginia in 1610. however he died in England in 1630 at Great Hormead in Herefordshire, not far from Henham. …
page 14
… headrights pertaining to Kirby discussed…
…Registers of Charles Parish (New Pocoson) …
page 15
people in York County
page 16
… this evidence firmly focused attention on Norfolk, England…
A great deal of work had been done on the various branches in Norflok …
… Framlingham Cawdy was also a cousin of the Countess of Warwick…
… Here, then, was a member of the Norfolk Kirby family with close association with many leading colonialists. Thomas, his brother, died in 1630, leaving a will of considerable interest..
page 17
page 18
page 19
Abstracts of Wills, 1484-1798 and Legal Proceedings, 1560-1700, Relating to Early Virginia Families
page 29
14 Robert Kirby
Norwich Archdeaconry 1604-5
1 Mar 1605/6 Proved: 13 Mar 1605/6
Robert Kirkby of Lynn Regis in Norfolk … To William Morgan my suit of apparel . . .
page382
914 will of Robert Waters 1625/5 proved
of Kings Lynn, Norfolk, Mariner To wife Beatrice …
to William Morgan and Bettrice Clampe 40/-each. …
page 640
1167 HCA 13/118
?1 July 1642
Answer of Bernard UTBER to the libel of William MORGAN, James FOREMAN, Richard EARLE and Henry ARMSTRONG
This case concerns the voyage of the ship “Mary” from Kings Lynn to Bordeaux.
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