Capt. Thomas Bradbury

Notes:

Arrived in 1635; first at York, Maine, then in Salisbury by 1640. He was initially a business agent for Ferdinando Gorges, to whom it has been said he was related. Obviously the beneficiary of a fine education, he held many public offices in his long life, and numerous samples of his excellent handwriting have survived to the present day.

Over time he has had several descents from the Plantagenet kings attributed to him, but most of them have been disproved. (The exception is a descent from Edward I for which Marshall K. Kirk made a very persuasive but not conclusive case in "A Probable Royal Descent for Thomas Bradbury of Salisbury, Massachusetts", NEHGR 161:27, 2007.) Nevertheless, Thomas Bradbury's proven ancestry extends far back into the Middle Ages. One of his great-uncles was an Archbishop of Canterbury; a 3XG-uncle, also named Thomas Bradbury, was a mayor of London. As Marshall K. Kirk wrote, "Unlike most immigrants to seventeenth-century New England, Thomas Bradbury's ancestry rates an entire book. Given his social standing as a member of the gentry and his business dealings with Sir Fernando Gorges, it would stand to reason that a royal descent from a Plantagenet king should be provable for Thomas Bradbury. Many of his siblings and aunts and uncles married people with such descent."

John Brooks Threlfall's The Ancestry of Thomas Bradbury (1611-1695) and His Wife Mary (Perkins) Bradbury (1615-1700) of Salisbury, Massachusetts, of which we have the second of three editions, traces for him a descent from Charlemagne through the Marmions of Checkingden, Oxfordshire, which seems to us sufficiently well-argued. But whether or not this descent is valid, the sheer number and variety of Thomas Bradbury's proven medieval forebears seems to us to earn him the title of "gateway ancestor" for his descendant JDM.

Thomas married Mary Perkins about 1636. Mary (daughter of John Perkins and Judith Gater) was born before 3 Sep 1615; was christened on 3 Sep 1615 in Hillmorton, Warwickshire, England; died on 20 Dec 1700 in Salisbury, Essex, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Mary Bradbury was born on 17 Mar 1643 in Salisbury, Merrimack, New Hampshire; died on 29 May 1724.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Between 1649 and 1650
• Alternate death: Bef 16 Aug 1649
• Alternate death: 1650

Wymond married Elizabeth Whitgift about 1605. Elizabeth (daughter of William Whitgift and (Unknown first wife of William Whitgift)) was born in Mar 1574 in Clavering, Essex, England; died on 26 Jun 1612; was buried in Croydon, Surrey, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

In the church at Croydon was once a marble tomb inscribed:

HERE LIETH ELIZABETH BRADBURY
WYFE UNTO WYMOND BRADBURY OF
NEWPORT-POND IN ESSEX GENT. DAUGTHER
TO WILLIAM WHITGIFTE OF CLAVERINGE IN
THE COUNTY AFORESAID GENT. AND SECOND
BROTHER TO DOCTOR JOHN WHITGIFTE ARCH-
BISHOPPE OF CANTERBURY; AND WHO HAD
ISSUE BY HER ABOVE NAMED HUSBAND JANE,
WILLIAM, ANNE AND THOMAS, AND DECEASED
THE 26 DAY OF JUNE AN. DÑI 1612, BEING
OF THE AGE OF 38 YEARES AND THREE
MONTHS

William married Anne Edon between 1568 and 1570. Anne (daughter of Henry Edon and Elizabeth Heigham) was born about 1542; died before 8 Feb 1612; was buried on 8 Feb 1612 in Wicken Bonhunt, Essex, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Not a daughter of Richard Eden.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Buried: 2 Aug 1615, Clavering, Essex, England

Notes:

He and his son John were trustees of the Hospital of the Holy Trinity at Croydon, founded by Archbishop John Whitgift for the benefit of the poor.

William married (Unknown first wife of William Whitgift). [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Between 1510 and 1515

Matthew married Margaret Rowse about 1535. Margaret was born in of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England; died before 1585. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Between 1515 and 1520, of Barningham, Suffolk, England

Notes:

Better known as Harry Edon. He was a gentleman farmer. Admitted to Lincoln's Inn 11 Feb 1537.

Henry married Elizabeth Heigham about 1540. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

He was a merchant and alderman of Great Grimsby.

Henry married Anne Dynewell about 1530. Anne (daughter of William Dynewell and Katherine Fulnetby) was born about 1515; died after 1550. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Marshall K. Kirk's posthumously-published "A Probable Royal Descent for Thomas Bradbury of Salisbury, Massachusetts", edited for publication by Martin E. Hollick and published in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 161, page 27, January 2007, lays out an involved, circumstantial, and yet reasonably convincing case for a descent from Edward I for Anne Dynewell and by extension her great-grandson the seventeenth-century immigrant Thomas Bradbury (1611-1695). Much of it is founded upon genuine statements made about the family of John Whitgift (d. 1604), Archbishop of Canterbury, by Francis Thynne, Lancaster Herald from 1602 until his death in 1608, and thus a contemporary of the archbishop. Archbishop Whitgift was a son of this Anne Dynewell and her husband Henry Whitgift.

The propositions for which Kirk argues are:

(1) That this Anne Dynewell was a daughter of William Dynewell and Katherine Fulnetby, and

(2) The aforementioned Katherine Fulnetby was a daughter of John Fulnetby and Jane Dymoke, who is known to have been a daughter of Thomas Dymoke and Margaret Welles.

William married Elizabeth. Elizabeth died on 13 Aug 1536. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Anderson and Threlfall (citation details below) call her "possibly" the Elizabeth Bradbury who d. 13 Aug 1536.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Oct 1478, of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England
• Alternate death: Between 11 Feb 1532 and 28 Apr 1533

Thomas married Joan Gates before Sep 1498. Joan (daughter of Clement Gates and Margaret) died between 19 Jan 1534 and 2 Jul 1534. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1490, of Barrow Hall, Suffolk, England
• Alternate death: 9 Mar 1571

Notes:

Member of Parliament for Rye in Oct 1553, for Ipswich Apr 1554, for West Looe Nov 1554, and for Lancaster 1558. Chief baron of the exchequer Mar 1558 to Jan 1559. Speaker of the House of Commons, 1554. Knighted by Queen Mary.

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (citation details below):

Heigham, Sir Clement [...] judge and speaker of the House of Commons, was born towards the end of the fifteenth century, being the eldest son of Clement Heigham (d. 1500) of Lavenham, Suffolk, and Maud, daughter of Lawrence Cooke of the same place. Several members of the family were connected with the law, most notably Richard Heigham (d. 1500), serjeant-at-law, who had been a bencher of Lincoln's Inn in the time of Edward IV. Clement was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1517 and called to the bar in 1525. By 1528 he was chief bailiff of the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, and from 1529 until his death a justice of the peace for Suffolk. He was a bencher of the Middle Temple by 1534 and in 1538 gave his first reading on the statute De conjunctim feoffatis; he served as treasurer in 1540–41 and gave a second reading in 1548.

About 1520 Heigham married Anne, daughter of John Munnings of Semer Hall (or perhaps of Thomas Munnings of Bury), with whom he had five surviving daughters. Heigham leased the manor of Semer from the abbey of Bury, and purchased it after the dissolution. His second wife was Anne (1505–1589), daughter of George Waldegrave of Smallbridge, and widow of Henry Bures of Acton. From Thomas Wentworth, first Baron Wentworth, to whom he was distantly related by this marriage, he acquired in 1539 the manor of Barrow in Suffolk and built Barrow Hall, which survived until the early eighteenth century. An adherent of the Roman church, he came suddenly to prominence on the accession of Mary I, when he rallied behind the new regime, becoming a member of parliament in October 1553 and a member of the privy council the following May. In five years he sat for the four constituencies of Rye, Ipswich, West Looe, and Lancaster, and was active on committees and commissions. As speaker of the Commons in 1554–5 he presided over the restoration of papal authority in England, and was rewarded with a knighthood on 27 January 1555. According to Foxe, he was particularly zealous in the persecution of protestants.

On 2 March 1558 Heigham was appointed chief baron of the exchequer, the last occupant of that position who was not a serjeant; but he held the office for little more than eight months, until the queen's death in November. Some sources say that he was continued in office briefly by Elizabeth, but no patent has been found and it seems likely that he was the only judge not reappointed in 1558; his successor (Sir Edward Saunders) was appointed on 22 January 1559. Heigham retired to his seat at Barrow and slid back into obscurity, though he was permitted to remain an active county magistrate and retained his office of custos rotulorum. He died on 9 March 1571, and was commemorated in Barrow church by a canopied monument with brass figures of himself in armour between his two wives, and a long inscription. His eldest son, Sir John Heigham (1540–1626), was a member of parliament under Elizabeth I and James I.

From Wikipedia (accessed 25 May 2021):

Advancement to the summit of his career depended, for Heigham, upon the favour of Mary and her Chancellor, which came with expectations. Inevitably he was an instrument of their persecutions, and as a justice and magistrate he must frequently have given the first hearings to cases of religious delinquency. His reputation for severity towards common people as heretics seems borne out by a few stories in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments.

He was plunged directly into the full political force of Gardiner's intentions within hours of receiving his knighthood. On 28 and 29 January 1554/55 Heigham was in St Mary Overie where Stephen Gardiner with Edmund Bonner presided over a solemn company of the bishops, many lords, knights and others, to witness the public inquisition and excommunication of John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester. Hooper was condemned, sentenced and handed over to the Sheriffs of London for burning. Many, including Sir Clement Heigham and Sir Richard Dobbs, were required to witness the notarial certificate of the proceedings. John Rogers (Prebendary of St Paul's), Dr. Rowland Taylor and Laurence Saunders (brother of Sir Edward) were condemned in the same session: Hooper was burned on 9 February 1554/55. On 5 March 1555, Queen Mary rewarded Heigham for his loyalty to her at Framlingham, and for his services as Speaker, by the grant in chief of the reversion of the manor and rectory of Nedging, Suffolk, with its lands in Semer, Bildeston, Whatfield and Chelsworth.

Heigham was also on the Cambridge Castle Bench with Sir Robert Broke, Edward Griffith and others when Thomas Mountain, the troubled minister of Whittington College, was brought into the August sessions of 1555, after a long imprisonment, and was found to have no accusers. The County Sheriff for November 1554 to 1555, Sir Oliver Leader, spoke up for Mountain, and then said he had forgotten to bring with him the writ against the man. Griffith, in the meantime, was telling Mountain that he was a traitor and a heretic, and likely to be hanged. However without a writ or an accuser Broke and his fellow-justices were obliged in all equity to release Mountain on bail, which was immediately put up by his acquaintances, and he was later able to make an escape.

In Ipswich in summer 1555 Robert Samuel, a minister of East Bergholt, was imprisoned, and burnt at the stake on 31 August. During his confinement two devout women of reformist views, Agnes Potten and Joan Trunchfield, visited Samuel and gave him encouragement. Immediately after his execution they were arrested and imprisoned, and the accounts of the Chamberlains of Ipswich show that Sergeant Holmes made two journeys to the home of Sir Clement Heigham in that connection before they were burned in a single fire at Ipswich on 19 February 1555/56.

At about this time information had been given against Robert Pygot, a painter from Wisbech, for non-attendance at church. He was called into the sessions, and Heigham said to him, "Ah, are you the holy father the painter? How chance you came not to the church?": to which Pygot answered, "Sir, I am not out of the church; I trust in God." "No, sir", said Heigham, "this is no church: this is a hall." "Yea, sir", said Pygot, "I know very well it is a hall: but he that is in the true faith of Jesus Christ, is never absent, but present in the church of God." "Ah sirrah", said the judge, "you are too high for me to talk with, wherefore I will send you to them that are better learned than I." So he was taken to jail in Ely and interrogated, and was burned there on 16 October 1555.

Heigham was present at the examination of John Fortune alias Cutler, a blacksmith of Hintlesham who had influenced Roger Bernard (a man burned at Bury St Edmunds on 30 June 1556). The Bishop of Norwich interviewed him, and Heigham intervened at a critical point in the dialogue. The bishop told Fortune he should be burned like a heretic, and Fortune asked "who shall give judgement upon me?" The bishop said, "I will judge a hundred such as thou art", and Fortune asked again, "Is there not a law for the spiritualty as well as for the temporalty?" Sir Clement Heigham said, "Yes, what meanest thou by that?" Fortune told the bishop he was a perjured man, because he had taken an oath to resist the Pope, in King Henry's time: and therefore, like a perjured lawyer, he should not be allowed to sit in judgement. 'Then sayde maister Hygham: "it is tyme to weede out suche fellowes as you bee in deede".' (This is from Fortune's own account.) Fortune was condemned.

Foxe also mentions John Cooper of Wattisham, who was arraigned at a Bury Lent Assize in 1557 before Sir Clement Heigham for allegedly having said that he should pray "if God would not take away Queen Mary, that then the devil would take her away." This accusation, for a treasonable saying, was made by one Fenning, who is thought to have borne false witness: Cooper denied it. Heigham told Cooper "he should not escape, for an example to all heretics", and sentenced him to be hanged, drawn and quartered, which was accordingly done.

In July 1558 the outspoken country wife Alice Driver of Grundisburgh, near Woodbridge, who had been pursued for her Protestant views into hiding in the countryside, appeared before Sir Clement at the Bury Assizes. Before him her principal offence was to compare Queen Mary to Jezebel, and to call her by that name, for which Heigham then and there commanded that her ears be cut off, which was done. He then committed her to be interrogated by Dr Spenser, Chancellor of Norwich, at Ipswich, where her spirited defence led to her condemnation and death at the stake in November 1558. It is said that he issued a writ for the burning of three men at Bury St Edmunds about a fortnight before the death of Queen Mary, when it was already known that she was beyond hope of recovery.

Clement married Anne Munnings about 1520. Anne (daughter of Thomas Munnings and Margaret) was born in of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England; died between 26 May 1640 and 22 Aug 1540. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

William married Katherine Fulnetby about 1510. Katherine (daughter of John Fulnetby and Jane Dymoke) was born about 1490; died before 6 Jan 1546; was buried on 6 Jan 1546 in Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Between 1445 and 1455
• Alternate death: 1489

Notes:

Anderson and Threlfall (citation details below) say "said to have d. 1489, and certainly d. by 1510." They also say he is "said to have" married Anne Wyant, daughter of Infans Wyant. Note that the 1890 Bradbury Memorial (citation details below) marks the Wyant connection with a "said to have" as well.

Writing later on his own in The Ancestry of Thomas Bradbury (citation details below), John Brooks Threlfall also dismisses, as chronologically impossible, the entries in various visitation pedigrees that show this Robert Bradbury having married Joan, daughter of Sir John FitzWilliams and widow of Thomas Bendish.

Also in The Ancestry of Thomas Bradbury, Threlfall notes that the source for his claimed death date of 1489 is the records made from the monuments in the crypt of the Grey Friars monastery in London, where Robert Bradbury was buried. The monuments themselves were destroyed in the reign of Edward VI, but the records survived. However, also surviving is a writ of Diem Clausit Extremum issued on 18 Dec 1500 to Robert Bradbury, Gentleman, Hertford, Essex, London, so it seems clear that the Grey Friars record is wrong and that Bradbury lived to 1500.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Between 24 Sep 1495 and Mar 1496, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England

Notes:

Said to have come "from the north", but Threlfall (citation details below) says this was almost certainly the not for this Thomas Edon but rather an ancestor.

Thomas married Agnes Brette before 1474. Agnes (daughter of Thomas Brette) died between 24 Jul 1506 and 1 Sep 1506. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Clement married Margaret. Margaret died after 20 Apr 1498. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Clement married Matilda Cook. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Between 1470 and 1480
• Alternate death: Aft 22 Aug 1540

Notes:

In 1521 the monastery of St. Edmund granted the office of keeper of their park to this Thomas Munnings and his son-in-law, Sir Clement Heigham, with a ground rent of 45s. 6d., and other profits and rewards to the same belonging.

Thomas married Margaret. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

According to Anderson and Threlfall (citation details below), "poss. daughter of Henry Woodward."

Notes:

Regarding his date of death, Kirk and Hollick say in a footnote that "[o]n 30 August 1523, John Fulveby [sic] was granted a commission to collect royal subsidy
in Lincolnshire, but on 3 November 1528 he was noted as deceased in the will
of Thomas Bryge of Sausthorpe.."

John married Jane Dymoke about 1485. Jane (daughter of Thomas Dymoke and Margaret Welles) was born about 1467. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]