Two different William Fitzwilliams, living at same time
lyra
It is sometimes useful to have background details or facts,
including family trees.
Elizabeth's mention of the Cooke/Fitzwilliam marriage
reminded me of the occasionally mixed-up story of the two Williams.
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One may be the Mona Lisa (!) -
why not? it looks like a man -
1.
William Fitzwilliam
________________
William Fitzwilliam (1st Earl of Southampton)
Born: ABT 1490, Aldwark, Yorkshire, England
Died: 15 Oct 1542, Newcastle Tyne, Northumberland, England
Notes: Knight of the Garter.
Father: Thomas FITZWILLIAM of Aldwark (Sir)
Mother: Lucy NEVILLE
Married: Mabel CLIFFORD (C. Southampton) Nov 1513, Skipton, Yorkshire,
England
Associated with: ¿?
Children:
1. Son FITZWILLIAM
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2.
William Fitzwilliam
________________
IV. GAINSPARK and MILTON LINE
John FITZWILLIAM of Milton
Born: 1411, Greens Norton, England
Notes: Fitzwilliam data was put together as near as could be remembered
after family records were destroyed by a jealous in law.
Father: John FITZWILLIAM (Sir Knight)
Mother: Eleanor GREENE
Married: Ellen VILLERS (b. ABT 1415) (dau. of William Villers of
Brokysby) ABT 1440
Children:
1. William FITZWILLIAM of Milton (Sir Knight)
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William FITZWILLIAM of Milton (Sir Knight)
Born: ABT 1440, Gainspark Hall, Essex, England
Died: 9 Aug 1534, Milton, Northamptonshire, England
Notes: made his fortune in London as a merchant tailor, alderman and
sheriff of London. Treasurer and Chamberlain to Wolsey. Purchased
Milton in 1506.
Father: John FITZWILLIAM of Milton
Mother: Ellen VILLERS
Married: Anne HAWES
Children:
1. William FITZWILLIAM of Gainspark (Sir Knight)
2. Elizabeth FITZWILLIAM
3. Anne FITZWILLIAM
4. Richard FITZWILLIAM of Milton
...................................................................
Anne FITZWILLIAM
Born: ABT 1504, Milton, Northamptonshire, England
Died: 5 Jun 1588
Father: William FITZWILLIAM of Milton (Sir Knight)
Mother: Anne HAWES
Married 1: Anthony COOKE of Gidea Hall (Sir) BEF 1523, Gidea Hall,
Romford, Essex, England
Children:
1. Mildred COOKE (B. Burghley)
2. Anne COOKE
3. Elizabeth COOKE (B. Russell)
4. Anthony COOKE (b. 1535)
5. William COOKE (MP)
6. Richard COOKE of Gidea Hall
7. Edward COOKE
8. Catherine COOKE
9. Margaret COOKE
Married 2: John HAWES
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information from tudorplace.com
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lyra
John FITZWILLIAM of Milton
Mother: Eleanor GREENE
......................................................................................................
Sir Henry GREEN Kt. [Pedigree]
r. Drayton, Eng.
r. Greens Norton, Northants, Eng.
Children:
Eleanor GREENE m. Sir John FITZWILLIAM Kt. (-1417)
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(quote, excerpts)
He who steps out into the night finds at first that all is gross
darkness, but as he gropes his way, dim landmarks begin to shape
themselves out of the darkness. The faint rays of light grow plainer,
and the traveller at last walks in a path that has familiar objects to
the right and the left to show him how far he has come and in what
direction he is going.
So in this history, the beginning of the Greene family is shrouded in
the night of the unchronicled story of centuries ago. A date or two
comes down to us. The hazy figure of Lord Alexander rises like a ghost
from his seven centuries of dust. There is a certain branching and
widening out of the family.
Not until the fourth lord of the line comes more than the name of the
Lords de Greene.
All that we really know of the first Lord de Greene may be summed up in
this brief paragraph.
Alexander, of the House of Arundel, a Knight of the King's court, was
the great-great grandson of Alen de la Zouche, the uncle of William the
Conqueror and Duke of Bretagne, and the great grandson of one of the
Norman nobles who invaded England with William the Conqueror in 1066.
King John bestowed the estate of Boughton in Northampton upon him in
1202. John was the ruler of both England and France and apparently
awarded Boughton, or Boketon, to Lord Alexander in return for the
latter's support during a rebellion that raged in England while the
king was in France putting down a similar rebellion there. The exact
extent of the estate is not known, but the least a great baron could
own and hold his rank was fifty hides of land, i.e., six thousand
acres. Halstead, in his Succinct Genealogies, a very rare work done in
1585, says that at one time the Greenes were the largest land owners in
the kingdom.
Lord Alexander assumed a surname after his chief estate de Greene de
Boketon, i.e., the Lord of the Park of the Deer Enclosure.
A green in the early day was a park. Boketon is an old, old word
meaning the buck's ton, or paled-in enclosure.
Centuries ago the terminal syllable, ton, had lost its original sense
and meant a town. So that Boketon, still used in the original sense,
shows that Lord Alexander came to an estate named long before and noted
for its extensive parks and deer preserves. Boketon became Bucks,
Buckston, and later Boughton, its present name. It lies in Northampton.
For five generations the de Greenes spoke Norman-French. They were a
family that delighted in athletic sports.
They hunted, hawked, and attended tournaments, played games of tennis,
cricket, and bowls. All of them in their generations were noted for
their fine bowling alleys, two or three of which were the finest in
England.
Charles I was arrested at Althorpe, where he had gone to bowl, and this
once belonged to the Greenes.
Alexander had a passionate love of horticulture that has throughout
these seven centuries dominated his entire line of descendants. There
is probably no other English speaking family today that has so many
members that delight in beautiful home grounds and in flowers and fruit
and finely kept farms.
In 1215, when the English Lords forced King John to sign the Magna
Carta, there were only seven barons that adhered to John and Lord
Alexander de Greene de Boketon was not one of them.
Therefore, he must have been one of the two thousand nobles who put
their united protests in the hands of twenty-five lords who presented
the Magna Carta to the king and forced him to sign that document that
guaranteed both the lives and the property of his subjects from
arbitrary spoliation.
One of the signers was Roger, Earl of Winchester, whose great-great
granddaughter, Lucie de la Zouche, married Sir Alexander de Greene's
great-great grandson, Lord Thomas(5).
2. The second baron of the line, as listed in old rolls of the
twentieth year of Henry III (1236) and the forty-fifth year of the same
king (1261) was Sir Walter de Boketon, son of Lord Alexander, who was a
Crusader in the seventh Crusade. He is again listed in the roll of the
seventh year of Edward II (1214), and the name of his son, John de
Greene de Boketon, is given at the same time.
3.John de Greene de Boketon, above mentioned, was doubtlessly the young
crusading Knight who perished in Palestine in 1271, leaving a son born
the same year. John died before he came to his title, his father still
living, so the states passed onto his young son.
4. Sir Thomas de Greene, the son of John, was born in 1271. Halstead
says of him: "Sir Thomas we find recited in an ancient catalog of the
knights who accompanied Edward I against the Scots in 1296." Sir
Thomas' wife was Alice, daughter and co-heir of Sir Thomas Bottisham of
Braunstonl. Sir Thomas de Greene was mentioned in the records of 1319
as then alive.
5. 5. Sir Thomas de Greene, the fifth lord, was born in 1292. When he
was about forty, he was made High Sheriff of Northampton (1330-1332) in
the early part of the reign of Edward III.
He married the Lady Lucie de la Zouche, lineally descended from Alen,
the famous Earl and Sovereign of Bretagne. Her ancestry follows:
(1) Robert the Strong, son or grandson of Wittekind, the famous Saxon
chieftan who defied Charlemagne. Charles the Bold, the grandson of
Charlemagne, called on Robert the Strong of Germany to aid him when he
was fighting his brothers. In return for his services, Robert was
rewarded with rich territorial grants and the titles of Count of Anjou
and Duke of the Isle de France. This was in 861. Some time later, he
married the granddaughter of Charlemagne. He fell in battle with the
Norsemen who were harassing the Frankish kingdom.
(2) Duke Robert, the son of Robert the Strong, and his brother, Duke
Eudes, are sometimes considered among the kings of France because of
the great power that they exercised.
(3) Count Hugo the White, or Hugo the Great, became Duke of France and
was king in all but name. He was the son of Duke Robert. (4) Hugh
Capet, the son of Hugo the Great, seized the throne of France from the
weak descendant of Charlemagne in 987 and was crowned king at Rheims.
He was the founder of the long line of kings that reigned in France
down to 1848. He married a sister of Guilhelm Fier-a-Bras (William of
the Iron Arm), Duke of Aquitaine. (5) Robert the Pious, Hugh's son,
came to the throne in 996 and reigned until his death in 1031. He was a
good man but a weak king. He married Constans of Provence.
(6) Henry, who became king in 1031 on the death of his father, was the
third of the Capetian line. The whole of his twenty-nine years' reign
was a constant struggle with his great nobles. Guerilla warfare was
carried so far that the Church proclaimed a "Truce of God", by which no
hostilities could take place from Thursday evening until Monday
morning, or on feast days, or during Lent or Advent. King Henry married
as his second wife and mother of his children Anne of Russia, daughter
of the Grand Duke Jarolsav and descendant of Jaroslav the Great.
(7) Hugh Magnus, Count of Vermandois, better known as the Great
Crusader, was the first of the great leaders to reach the Holy Land in
1096.
He was the second son of King Henry. He died in the city of Tarsus in
1102. (8) Lady Isabel, daughter of Count Hugh, married Robert de
Bellemont, Earl of
Mellent and first Earl of Leicester. (9) Earl Robert, the second,
married Aurelia de la Ware, daughter of Ralph, Earl of Norfolk. Earl
Robert was the Lord Chief Justice of England.
(10) Earl Robert, third Earl of Leicester, married Petronella, daughter
of Hugh de Grantes-Mismil. (11) Lady Margaret de Bellemont, married
Sieur de Quincy. He was in the Crusade of 1188-1192, under Richard
Coeur de Lion, King of England. One of his fellow crusaders was Robert,
third Earl of Leicester, afterward his father-in-law.
In 1207, King John created t his nobleman Earl of Winchester.
Neverthe less, when the barons rose against King John eight years
later, he was one of the twenty-five great barons who signed the Magna
Carta and compelled the king to do likewise. (12) Earl Roger, second
Earl of Winchester, married Helen, daughter of Alen, Lord of Galloway.
(13) Lady Elene de Quincy married Alen, Lord de la Zouche, Governor of
the Castle of Northampton, who died in 1260. (14) Eudo de la Zouche
married Lady Millicent de Cantelupe. (15) Lady Lucie de la Zouche
married Sir Thomas, fifth Lord de Greene.
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6. Sir Henry de Greene as well as his father, Sir Thomas, received high
honors form the hand of King Edward III, one of the best and strongest
kings England ever had. Edward's trusted adviser was Sir Henry de
Greene, the foremost lawyer of his day.
Sir Henry's rank would not permit his pleading before the bar, but he
put all his mental acumen and legal knowledge at his royal master's
command.
Let Halstead tell the rest of his story: "He was a Commissioner to
examine certain abuses of which there was great complaint. He was much
employed and in special trust and authority under those ministers the
king left to govern the land in all the long wars he made in France...
His integrity, wisdom, and great abilities did occasion his advancement
(1353) to the office of Lord Chief Justice of England. He was Speaker
of the House of Lords in two Parlements (1363-1364) and became at last
of the King's nearest Counsel (State Cabinet). And such was his good
fortune, he left to his posterity one of the most considerab le estates
of that age. He died possessed of his ancient manor of Buckton, of
Greene's Norton, East Neaston, Heydmon Court, Heybourn, Ashby Mares,
and Dodington, with lands in Whittlebury, Paulsbury, and Northampton;
the lordships of Drayton, Luffwich, Pesford, Islip, Shipton, Wolston,
Wamingdon, Chalton, Houghton, Boteahaseall, with lands in
Harringsworth, Harrowden, Hardwich, Raunds, Ringstead, Titchmarsh,
Warrington, and sundry other places."
One of the Lord Chief Justice's enterprises was the establishment of a
Fair, held each year upon the spacious green or park of Boughton. A
charter was granted to him to hold a three day's fair on the "vigil,
day, and morrow" of the Day of St. John the Baptist, i.e. the
twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, and twenty-sixth of June each year.
The Boughton Fair became second only to the London Fair itself, and
noblemen brought their horses and livestock for exhibition, racing, and
sale.
The Boughton Fair still exists, five and a half centuries after its
rise.
The Lord Chief Justice died in 1370, a little under sixty, and was
buried at Boughton, the last of the Lords of the line to be buried
there. He was early married to Katherine, daughter of John, and the
only sister of Sir Simon, of Drayton.
7. Sir Henry de Greene, Lord Chancellor of England. Athough Henry was
the second son, his father and older brother, Thomas, the rightful
heir, set aside the old English law of primogeniture and gave the
titles and most of the lands to him, a thing almost unheard of in those
days of entailed estates.. Besides all but two of his father'ss
estates, he gained through marriage to Matilda, sole heiress of her
father, Lord Thomas Manduit, the lordships of Werminster, Westburg,
Lye, Grateley, Dyechurch, and "other fair possessions". More than this,
Henry's childless uncle, Simon, Lord of Drayton, settled his large
estate upon Henry, stipulating that when he was dead, Henry should
assume the title and bear on his escutcheon the Drayton coat-of-arms.
According to Halstead, this Sir Henry de Greene was the largest
landholder in all England.
Like his father, Henry refused to follow the usual Greene policy of
burying himself on his estates. He loved public life. His ability was
so great that he became as prominent a statesman as his father before
him. He was sent to the House of Commons and soon was one of the
leaders. The king knighted him, and Sir Henry was made one of the
King's near counselors, and later was appointed one of the Parlamentary
Commissioners who helped the king govern the country.
Better for him had he not been so popular with kings and princes.
When Edward III died, his grandson, Richard II came to the throne.
Richard II's reign was one of conspiracies and queer doings. One of the
conspirators Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford and Lancaster, was
banished for ten years, with the king's promise that he should not be
deprived of the lands and titles to rold Duke of Lancaster died, called
upon Sir Henry de Greene to help him obtain the coveted estates, and
Sir Henry pointed out to the commission that the king's demand was
lawful because all fiefs in England were held directly or indirectly
from the king and could be confiscated by him at will , whereupon the
unanimous Board of Commissioners sanctioned the king's action. There
was about this time a rebellion in Ireland which Richard set out to
quell, leaving the field open for Bolingbroke to seize the throne. He
blamed Sir Henry as the "brains" of the commission for his loss of
lands and titles and seized him with his two companions, Sir John Bushy
and the Earl of Wiltshire, at Bristol where they were beheaded
September 2, 1399.
The scene is decribed by Shakespeare in his Richard II, Act I and II,
although not sympathetically with the "conspirators". Shakespeare did
not let actual historical fact interfere with a good story, however.
8. Sir Thomas de Greene was knighted on the field of battle for great
bravery. He married his cousin, Ela de Greene. He had a beautiful
castle.
9. Sir Thomas Greene, also knighted on the field of battle, ten years
after his father was knighted. When Henry VII obtained the kingdom over
his enemies, he hated the very name of Greene.
He threw the last Sir Thomas into prison, in the Tower, where he died,
and Sir Thomas' second son, John, had to flee for his life. It might be
interesting to add here that Henry VII's son, Henry VIII, married as
his sixth and last wife Lady Catherine of Parr, a daughter of the House
of Greene, and she was the only one of Henry's wives to survive the
ordeal!
10. John Greene, the Fugitivel. During the Wars of the Roses, 1455 to
1485, the Greenes were the faithful adherents of the House of York. The
Yorkist king, Richard III, was one of the worst kings of England but
the Greenes remained loyal to him because he represented the Yorkist
House. In July 1485 Richard III plotted to have his two nephews
murdered and sent this John Greene to the Earl of Warwick, ordering him
to put the two princes to death.
The good Earl, Sir Robert, refused to do the deed and sent John back to
his king with the answer that he would not do so horrible a piece of
work. Here the curtain falls on the too faithful messenger.
Two years later Richard III was slain in battle, and Henry, the head of
the House of Lancaster, came to the throne after marrying Elizabeth,
heiress of the House of York, thus ending the Wars of the Roses. He
held a grudge against the House of Greene as one of the supporters of
the Yorkists, even imprisoning the old Sir Thomas Greene on the charge
of plotting trea son. John Greene fled to the continent, where he
became famous as the best swordsman in Europe.
Homesick for England and family, he ventured back to an English city in
which he was a stranger and passed as John Clarke, seeing his family
occasionally. Becoming less cautious, as he was not discovered, he was
drawn into a bout with the sword and his identity was discovered, from
his previous fame in that direction. Again he fled and remained abroad
until the death of the king. This story of flight and change of name is
the original legend that the family once bore the name of Clarke.
http://www.paintedhills.org/green_family.htm
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lyra
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>From the Fitzwilliams,
to the Greenes,
and to the Vaux, where I find
a poet!
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Thomas VAUX
(2nd B. Vaux of Harrowden)
Born: 25 Apr 1509
Died: Oct 1556
Father: Nicholas VAUX (1º B. Vaux of Harrowden)
Mother: Anne GREEN
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Married: Elizabeth CHENEY (B. Vaux of Harrowden)
Children:
1. William VAUX (3° B. Vaux of Harrowden)
2. Anne VAUX
3. Maud VAUX
4. Nicholas VAUX
5. Catherine VAUX
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Biography of Thomas Vaux
VAUX OF HARROWDEN, THOMAS VAUX, 2ND BARON (1510-1556), English poet,
eldest son of Nicholas Vaux, 1st Baron Vaux, was born in 1510. In 1527
he accompanied Cardinal Wolsey on bis embassy to France; he attended
Henry VIII. to Calais and Boulogne in 1532; in 1531 he took his seat in
the House of Lords, and was made Knight of the Bath at the coronation
of Anne Boleyn. He was captain of the Isle of Jersey until 1536.
He married Elizabeth Cheney, and died in October 1556. Sketches of Vaux
and his wife by Holbein are at Windsor, and a finished portrait of Lady
Vaux is at Hampton Court.
Two of his poems were included in the Songes and Sonettes of Surrey
(Tottel's Miscellany, 1557). They are " The assault of Cupid upon the
fort where the lover's hart lay wounded, and how he was taken," and the
" Dittye . . . representinge the Image of Deathe," which the
gravedigger in Shakespeare's Hamlet misquotes.
Thirteen pieces in the Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576) are signed by
him. These are reprinted in Dr A. B. Grosart's Miscellanies of the
Fuller Worthies Library (vol. iv., 1872). ..
http://www.poemhunter.com/thomas-vaux/biography/poet-39093/
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Nicholas VAUX
(1st B. Vaux of Harrowden)
Born: ABT 1460
Acceeded: 27 Apr 1523
Died: 14 May 1523
Father: William VAUX of Great Harrowden (Sir)
Mother: Catherine PENISON
Married 1: Elizabeth FITZHUGH (B. Vaux of Harrowden)
Children:
1. Catherine VAUX
2. Alice VAUX
3. Anne VAUX
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Married 2: Anne GREEN (dau of Sir Thomas Green, Knight) 1507
Children:
4. Thomas VAUX (2° B. Vaux of Harrowden)
5. William VAUX
6. Margaret VAUX
7. Maud VAUX
8. Bridget VAUX
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The details in this biography come from the History of Parliament, a
biographical dictionary of Members of the House of Commons.
Born ABT 1460, only son of Sir William Vaux of Great Harrowden by
Catherine, dau. of Gregory Penison or Peniston of Coursello, Provence.
Married first Elizabeth, dau. of Henry, 5th Lord FitzHugh, widow of Sir
William Parr of Kendal, by whom he had three daughters.
Married secondly, 1507/8, Anne, dau. and coheiress of Sir Thomas Green
of Boughton and Greens-Norton, Northants., by whom he had two sons and
three daughters.
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Succeeded family 4 May 1471. Kntd. 16 Jun 1487, banneret 17 Jun 1497;
cr. Baron Vaux 27 Apr 1523. Steward, Olney and Newport Pagnell, Bucks.
1485; numerous other stewardships; j.p. Northants. 1485-d.; commr.
musters 1488, subsidy 1512, 1515; sheriff 1495-6, 1501-2, 1516-17;
constable, Rockingham castle, Northants. 1502; lt. Guisnes 8 Jul
1502-d.; knight of the body 1508.
Nicholas Vaux's mother, an attendant on Queen Margaret of Anjou,
remained constant to her mistress when others forsook the Lancastrian
cause. Her husband, whom she had married not long before she obtained
her letters of denization, was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury after
which he was attainted and his property forfeited, but not even his
death shook Catherine Vaux's loyalty: she stayed by the Queen during
her imprisonment in the Tower and on Margaret's release in 1476 went
with her into exile (as she had done earlier in the 1460s), living with
her until her death six years later.
Catherine's two children did not share either her confinement or her
travels abroad; instead, Nicholas Vaux was brought up in the household
of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, without charge even though Edward IV
restored two manors to the family for the maintenance of him and his
sister.
Catherine's devotion was rewarded after the triumph of Henry VII at
Bosworth, where Nicholas Vaux, as a protégé of Margaret Beaufort,
probably fought under her husband Lord Stanley; the petition for the
reversal of the attainder on Vaux's father and the forfeiture of his
property was accepted by the King in the Parliament of 1485, and not
long after Vaux was named to the commission of the peace for his home
county.
He fought for the King at Stoke and Blackheath, being knighted on the
field for his service in both battles. Not only was he active and
diligent in local government but he was also frequently at court
attending all the great state occasions at home and abroad until his
death; in 1511 he entertained Henry VIII at Harrowden.
It was as a soldier and diplomat, however, that he made his mark. Given
the important command at Guisnes, he distinguished himself during the
Tournai campaign in 1513 and then in the missions (he had had some
earlier experiences in negotiating, chiefly with Burgundy) to the
French King about the English withdrawal and the several royal marriage
treaties. Later, he was one of the devisers of the Field of the Cloth
of Gold. His sister had also benefited from the change of dynasty: she
entered the royal household, became governess to Henry VII's daughters
and married successively Sir Richard Guildford and the father of Sir
Nicholas Poyntz.
Vaux was a natural candidate for election to Parliament, although in
the absence of so many returns for the early Tudor period he is known
to have been a Member only in 1515 when he and Sir John Hussey took a
memorandum on certain Acts from the Commons up to the Lords. Presumably
he sat for his own shire on this occasion as he was afterwards
appointed to the Northamptonshire commission for the subsidy which he
had helped to grant.
In Oct 1522 Sir William Sandys reported that Vaux was laid 'very
sore' at Calais. Evidently he recovered sufficiently to return to
England where in the following year he was summoned to the Upper House
as a baron, apparently after the Parliament had opened at the
Blackfriars. He did not survive the first session, dying on 14 May at
the hospital of St. John, Clerkenwell. Three days previously he had
made a will by which he provided for his children and servants and left
the residue of his estate to his executors. who included Sir Henry
Guildford, George Throckmorton and Richard Knightley; among the
supervisors he appointed Henry Marney, 1º B. Marney, and Sir William
Parr. He was presumably buried at the Blackfriars, which of his three
choices for interment was the nearest.
http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/NicholasVaux(1BHarrowden).htm
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