Notes |
- From The Ancestry of Bethia Harris, citation details below:
The family of Reade, of Wickford, co. Essex, presents an interesting example of a gradual rise, by the acquisition of property, from the ranks of the yeomanry to the status of gentry. There is some slight evidence that the Reades had claims to gentility before the series of wills on which we rely in visualizing them commenced in 1534. When the brothers William and Thomas Reade applied to the College of Arms in 1654, arms were not granted but confirmed to them as follows: "Azure, a griffin segreant and a canton or; crest, a griffin's head erased azure, beak and ears or." In the pedigree of the family of Mildmay the match is recorded of a Thomas Mildmay, living in the town of Chelmsford, near Wickford, in 1521, and Agnes Reade, whose parentage is unknown but who was a daughter of a fam ily which bore as arms "Vert, a griffin segreant or."
Two at least of the farms owned by the Reades in Wickford and neighboring parishes, "Fryearne" and "Sopers," are still called by those names and can be easily identified.
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