an ancient one, and takes us back to the days of the Saxon
Kings — that is, as the name of a place. There were four
places of the name in England, one in the County of Mid-
dlesex, about eight miles from London, one in Hertford-
shire, one in Warwickshire, and Kingsbury East in Kings-
bury Hundred, in Somersetshire on the river Parrott. Its
ancient name was Kingsbury Episcopii,* and the manor
was held by the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Kingsbury in
Warwickshire belonged to the famous Countess Godiva, and
in the Domesday book is called " Chinesburie." Leofric,
Earl of Mercia, her husband, was descended from the Saxon
Kings of Mercia, and inherited their ancient seat. Leofric's
granddaughter married Turchil de Arden, one of the Con-
queror's Norman Knights, and their granddaughter married
Peter de Bracebridge, in whose family the lordship of
Kingsbury remained until the time of Queen Elizabeth. A
daughter of this race married Sir John Arden, of Arden,
who was either the grandfather or great-uncle of Mary
Arden, Shakespeare's mother. At all events, Shakespeare
was descended from the Ardens, and doubtless had that fact
in mind when he wrote the lines —
" When nightingales in Arden sit and sing
Among the daintie dew-empearled flowers,"
and not the forest of Ardennes in Flanders, as has been
claimed by commentators. The Bracebridges lived at
Kingsbury Hall, and in the church in Kingsbury their arms
*The marriages at Kingsbury Episcopii, from 1577 to 1812, copied from the
parish registers, have been printed in Somerset Parish Registers, Vol. V., edited by
W. P. W. Phillimore, M.A., B.C.L., but the family name of Kingsbury does not
appear in them at all.
(16)
olA
ou-f
ou-f
FAMILY NAME IN ENGLAND.
l 7
may be seen impaled with those of the family of Francis,
and curiously enough the arms of Francis are: a "chevron
argent, between three eagles displayed gules."* These
charges are nearly the same as those of the old Kingsbury
coat of arms owned by Hon. Andrew Kingsbury of Hartford,
nearly one hundred years ago, but in those azure is substituted
for gules. It is not known where Mr. Kingsbury obtained
these arms, but this coincidence is certainly curious. Kings-
nL tf^ ^ 3 ^ *»*>&^
Argent, a fess azure between three eagles displayed of the same.
Facsimile of a drawing of Kingsbury coat of arms, owned by Andrew Kingsbury, Esq.
of Hartford about 1800.
bury Hall is described as "a house of Henry VII's time, built
with its great manor-court chamber within a fortress, of
which the curtain wall and the octagonal towers remain,
probably of the time of King John."
The Manor of Kingsbury in the Hundred of Caishoe, Co.
Herts, " was so termed from the Saxon Kings, who were
the ancient possessors thereof, and often resided and kept
* Hugh Francis was of Gifford's Hall, in Wickhambrook, near Boxford, 6 Hen.
VI. Arms : Gules, a chevron engrailed, ermine, 5 eagles displayed, argent. His gr.
dau. and co-heiress, Margaret, mar. Thomas Peyton of Peyton Hall, ob. 8 Hen. VII.
Her sister, Isabel, mar. Thomas Higham. Davy's Suffolk Collections, British Mu-
* seum. It will be remembered that James K. of Boxford, mar. Anne ffrancis in 1584.
18 THE KINGSBURY FAMILY.
their Court there, among- whom Bertulph, King- of the
Mercians, celebrated a Parliamentary Council there on Fri-
day after Easter, in the year of Christ 851. . . . There
was a stately Pallace that belonged to the Castle of Kings-
bury, scituated at the west end of the Town of St. Albans,
where the Saxon Kings delighted much, and their Nobles and
Officers so often resorted thither that they became a great
Burden and Charge to the Abbot and Monks of St. Albans,
which induced them to purchase it ; and after they had made
many Addresses to the King for it, Alfric, who had been
Chancellor to King Etheldred, whilst he was a Secular, pre-
vailed with the King to sell to them all the royal Mannor of
Kingsbury, with the Parks and Woods belonging to it, ex-
cepting one small Fortress near the Monastery, which the
King would not suffer to be demolisht, that the Marks of
his Royal House might not be forgotten ; and the Abbot
and Monks bought and enjoyed it till the time of the Disso-
lution, when it returned to the Crown." Through various
hands it passed to Sir Francis Bacon, Viscount Verulam,
Keeper of the Great Seal (the great Lord Bacon), but
when the Seal was taken from him, and he retired from
the Court, he sold it. — Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire,
by Sir Henry Chauncy, Kt., II 314.
Camden speaks of Kingsbury Castle at St. Albans, in his
Britannia, II. 73.
(Dugdale's Monasticon, ed. Caley and Ellis, Vol. 11, p. 320.)
Ethelbright, rex sepultus apud Winburne, et hie fuit ter-
tius fundator Vilodunensis monasterii.
Wulstanus comes Vilodunensis contra Ethelmundum re-
gem merciorum pugnans, vicit ; gravissimis tamen vulner-
ibus acceptis, ex quibus ante annum periit. Hie quandam
antiquam ecclesiam S. Mariae Viloduni reparavit, antea per
Danos tantum non destructam : instituitque in ea collegium
sacerdotum qui preces, et pro Alquimundo patre suo, cru-
deliter ab Ethelmundo Merciorum rege interfecto, et pro se
assidue funderent.
Mortuo postea Wulstano comite, uxor ejus Alburga, soror
Ecberti regis Visi-Saxonum, obtinuit a fratre, ut monaste-
rium ibidem fieret sacrarum virginum, cujus primus fun-
FAMILY NAME IN ENGLAND. 19
dator idem Ecbertus dictus. Prope hoc monasterium erant
Wulstani comitis aedes, regiaque civitas in qua monasterium
conditcum fait. King^esbyri dicebatur, quod nomen vel
hodie servat. Fundatum vero fuit monasterium anno Dom-
ini DCCC. errantque duodecim sacrae virgines praeter
prsesedem. •
King Ethelbert was buried at Winburne, and he was the
third founder of the monastery of Wilton. Wulstan, Earl of
Wilton, fought against Ethelmund, King of the Mercians,
and conquered, but received very severe wounds of which
he died within a year. He rebuilt an ancient church of St.
Mary of Wilton, which had been almost destroyed by the
Danes, and established in it a college of priests to offer up
continual prayers both for his father, Alchmund, who had
been cruelly put to death by Ethelmund, King of the Mer-
cians, and for himself. After the death of Earl Wulstan,
his wife Alburga, sister of Egbert, King of the West Saxons,
persuaded her brother to make it a monastery of nuns, and
of this Egbert is called the first founder. Near this mon-
astery was the residence of Earl Wulstan, and the royal
city in which the monastery was established was called
Kingsbury, and preserves this name down to the present
day. This monastery was founded A. D. 800, and there
were twelve nuns besides the abbess.
Domesday Book, Vol. 1, 240.
" Warwicsire XV. Terra Comitissae Godevae, In Coleshelle,
H'd.
Ipsa Countessa tenuit, T. R. E., Chinesberie,
Ibi sunt — vi, Hidae," etc.
Translation. — The Countess held Chinesburie (Kings-
burye). There are 6 hides. The arable employs 7 ploughs,
2 are in the demesne, and 1 bondman. There are ^ villiens,
and 3 borders, with 2 priests ; they have 16 ploughs. A mill
pays 9s and 4d. and there are 1 2 acres of meadow. Wood 1
mile long and the same broad. In King Edward's time it
was worth 6 pounds, and afterwards 7 pounds, now 13 pounds
by weight.
Dugdale says : " King Edward the Confessor gave to
Westminster Abbey a third of the forest growing in his
20 THE KINGSBURY FAMILY.
wood at Kyngsbury. It lies in the Hundred of Goare, about
6 miles' N. W. of London.
" Chingesberie, Hundred of Helstone, Middlesex, tenet
Ernulf de Hesdings." — Domesday Book.
The first individual of the name that is known to us is
Gilbert de Kingsbury, who was the incumbent of St. Peter's
Church, Kingsbury, Warwickshire, about 1300. He prob-
ably derived his surname from the place. In 1368 we find
a William de Kingsbury mentioned in fhe will of Gervase
de Wyllesford, Rector of Barnak, in Northamptonshire.
There are quite a number of ecclesiastics of the name.
David Kynnesbury {alias ap Simon), was Vicar of Cheshunt,
Herts, appointed April 12, 1480, died 1503. Thomas Kings-
bury was Archdeacon of St. Albans, 15 17, and it was appar-
ently another Thomas Kingsbury who was Archdeacon in
1531, and was removed at the dissolution of the monasteries.*
A Rev. Thomas Kingsbury was Rector of a Parish in Suffolk,
temp. Jac. I.— Suffolk Traveller. At Halford, Kineton Hun-
dred, Warwickshire, on the river Stone, in the southern
part of the county, is a gravestone near the door of the
church bearing this inscription : " Hie jacet Magister, Hen-
ricus Kyngesberie quondam Rector estius ecclesiae, qui obiit
1 die mensis March An. D. MCCCCLXXXVII — Cujus
Animae proprietur Deus Amen." Then in the list of the
incumbents is the following : " Henr. Kynnesbury, qui obiit
1 die mensis Marcii A. D. 1487."
But these ecclesiastics simply show us that the name
appears in different places and that the family must have
been of some consequence, especially as several of them
were Benedictines, who were called "the gentlemanly
monks," and were the most learned order in Europe, re-
cruited mostly from the higher classes of society. The
Abbot of St. Albans had a seat in the House of Lords, and
took precedence of all other Abbots in England. The first
one of the name of real importance to us is William de
Kyngesbury, whose name appears on the roll of Caxton's
Manor, in Little Cornard, in Suffolk, as early as 1369, in the
reign of Edward III, and continues until 141 2, in the time
of Henry IV, when he held Wattyscroft in the Manor of
* See Appendix, p. 594.
FAMILY NAME IN ENGLAND.
21
Little Cornard, the Lordship of Thomas de Grey.* In 1414
appears the name of John de Kingesbury. Perhaps they
were father and son, or perhaps brothers. Whether they
came from Kingsbury Hall, in Warwickshire, or from
Kingsbury Episcopii in Somerset, or from Kingsbury in
Middlesex, or were an offshoot from a Kingsbury family
in Dorset, we shall probably never know, but they were
undoubtedly the ancestors of the family in Suffolk from
Confirmed by Hawkins, Ulster King- at Arms, 1742, to Dr. Thomas Kingsbury,
Fellow of the King and Queen's College of Physicians, Ireland, son of Thomas
Kingsbury, Esq., descended from County Dorset.
Azure, a chevron or between two doves in chief, proper, and a serpent in base,
nowed of the last. Crest a wyvern vert. Motto: Prudens et innocens.
— Burke's General Armoury, ed., 1S7S.
which our ancestor, Henry Kingsbury, came, and 500 years
is a very respectable antiquity for a family name.
There was a family named Kingsbury in County Dorset,
who bore for a coat of arms, " Azure, a chevron or between
two doves in chief proper, and a serpent in base of the last.
Crest, a wyvern vert." Motto, "Prudens et innocens,"
* Court Rolls 1 Henry V. Suffolk Archaeological Collections, VI, 20.
22 THE KINGSBURY FAMILY.
perhaps referring- to the juxtaposition of the doves and
serpent. This may be the original stock, and John de
Kingesbury may have come from them.
Among the wills in the probate registry at Bury St.
Edmunds, in Suffolk, is that of John Kyngesbury, the elder,
of Cornard Magna, dated August 10, 1539. He was prob-
ably a descendant of the man of the same name who was
living in Little Cornard rather more than one hundred
years before. He bequeaths his soul to Almighty God and
to "our Lady Saynte Mary, and to all the blessed Saints in
Glorye," and desires his body to be buried in the church-
yard of St. Andrewes of Cornard. He mentions his wife,
Elyn, several daughters, and two sons, John the elder and
John the younger. In 1542, three years later,, we find in
the Lay Subsidy Rolls the names of two John Kyngesburys,
one in Cornard Magna, and one in Cornard Parva, probably
the same two Johns, and in 1544 one of them was in New-
ton, an adjoining parish. It therefore seems probable that
one of these Johns was the John Kingsbury who in 1578
was living in Edwardstone, another adjacent parish, and
had two sons, James and Roger. They had litigation about
their father's property at that time, and it is stated that he
was an aged man.
This James Kingsbury died in Boxford, another near by
parish, in 1590, leaving a wife, Agnes, and several sons. The
oldest was James, who married Ann Francis in 1584, and had
eight children, five sons and three daughters. Only two of
them, James and Sarah, were baptized at Boxford, but
James' will gives the names of all. The sons were : James,
Henry, John, Joseph, and Thomas. Here we have the
names of the three brothers who came to New England,
Henry, John, and Joseph, and Thomas, another brother,
undoubtedly the Thomas Kingsbury who, according to Gov.
Winthrop, agreed to come, but never fulfilled his promise.
As we know that John and Joseph of Dedham were
brothers, and as John of Dedham names his kinsman,
Henry Kingsbury of Haverhill, an equal devisee with the
children of his brother Joseph, it would seem as if our
Henry, of Ipswich and Haverhill, was a son of one of the
other brothers, and a grandson of James Kingsbury of Box-
trtt; Fit.r
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Modern map of the southeastern pait of the County of Suffolk, the home of the Kingsburys.
ON THE ROAD TO BOXFORD, SUFFOLK.
FAMILY NAME IN ENGLAND. 23
ford, who died in 1622. What more likely than that he
should have been the son of Thomas, who never came, but
sent his son in his stead ? Look at the names of our
Henry's sons, John, Ephraim, James, Samuel, Thomas,
Joseph, four of the Christian names repeated that appear
in the will of James of Boxford, and he himself bore the
fifth name. Although none of them are uncommon names,
it would appear that this repeated juxtaposition could
hardly be accidental.
Another point in identifying these relationships is that
the wife of John Kingsbury of Dedham was named Mar-
garet, and on the Assington parish register is recorded the
marriage of John Kingsbury and Margaret Whisson in
1618. Also on the same register is the marriage of Henry
Kingsbury and Margaret Alabaster in 1621, and Henry K.,
who came with Winthrop, had a wife named Margaret, and
two children, James and Sarah, were baptized at Assington,
probably the two children who were sick with the measles
on board the " Talbot " in the harbor of Cowes. So every-
thing seems to fit in properly.
Margaret Alabaster was undoubtedly the widow of
Thomas Alabaster, who died in Assington in 1620. He had
married, July 8, 16 18, Margaret Blyth, and was the son of
Roger Alabaster of Hadleigh, Suffolk, and Bridget Win-
throp, his wife, daughter of Adam Winthrop, Esq., of
Groton, and aunt of Gov. John Winthrop. Thus, Henry
Kingsbury, the elder, married the widow of a first cousin
of Gov. Winthrop, and this makes it very natural that he
should be trusted, as he evidently was by Winthrop, with
very important matters of business.
A man holding a very responsible position, as a steward,
or agent, might be called in those days a "servant," but
that did not mean that he performed the duties of a menial.
The word is often met with in old letters and records, but
with a very different meaning from its present usage. Fre-
quently younger sons and relatives of a family were em-
ployed by the head of the house, or lived in his household,
and were called "servants," but they were not the hirelings
of the present day.
The Alabaster family held a very high position in Suffolk,
2 4
THE KINGSBURY FAMILY.
and it is hardly likely that the widow of one of them would
marry a man of mean extraction or position.* A letter in
the Winthrop Papers written by Rev. Henry Jacie, the
minister at Assington, speaks of Henry Kingsburie's com-
mission to obtain several books of theology, books that
would only be read by a man of some education, and in
those days a man who could read such books would have to
be a man of learning.
In considering these things it is necessary to remember
the standards of those days, and that the conditions of life
in the England of Elizabeth and James I were very different
from those in either the England or the United States of
the present day. It is evident from the wills of the Suffolk
Kingsburys that they possessed considerable land, and were
well supplied with household goods, and that they were
yeomen, the class next to the gentry, and frequently de-
scended from the gentry, younger sons, etc. There is
plenty of evidence that in the same family one branch
would be in the Herald's Visitation as gentry and another
would be yeomen. They were the bowmen and spearmen
who won Agincourt for Henry V, and fought the battles of
the English Kings in France for generations, the backbone
of the nation.
" A Knight of Cales, a Gentleman of Wales, and a Laird of the
North Countree,
A Yeoman of Kent, with his yearly rent, will buy them out
all three."
So says an old English ballad, and this shows the estima-
tion in which the yeoman was held ; a class that has now
disappeared, and is mourned by many English writers of
the Victorian age.
*Ann Alabaster, first cousin of Thomas Alabaster, married Dr. John Still, Bishop
of Bath and Wells, and at one time Rector of Hadleigh, Suffolk. He was the author
of the first true English play, "Gammer Gurton*s Needle," represented in Christ's
College, Cambridge, about 1565, with its well-known drinking-song :
" I love no rost, but a nut-brown toste
And a crab laid in the fyre.
A little bread shall do me stead,
Much bread I not desyre ;
No froste nor snow nor winde, I trow,
Can hurte me if it wolde,
I am so wrapt and throwly lapt
Of jolly good ale and olde."
SOUTH VIEW OF ST. MARY'S CHURCH, BOXFORD, SUFFOLK.
NORTH VIEW OF ST. MARYS CHURCH, BOXFORD, SUFFOLK.
FAMILY NAME IN ENGLAND. 25
As the Kingsburys were so closely connected with Suf-
folk, some description of that region may be interesting.
In order to visit Assington, Boxford, Groton, and Edward-
stone, one goes from London to Sudbury, a distance of about
fifty miles by rail across Essex, and then obtains a convey-
ance at the " Rose and Crown Inn," to drive through Great
Cornard, on the river Stour, and then through Newton to
Boxford. Edwardstone is at the further end of Boxford
street, Assington is just beyond, and Polstead and Stoke-
next-Nayland lie on the Essex border. The country is
gently rolling, fertile, and well cultivated, and the landscape
is very pleasing. The frequent windmills remind one of
Holland and Nantucket. Gainsborough, a native of Sudbury
in this County, has painted these hamlets and forests in some
of his most beautiful pictures, and Suffolk was a favorite
sketching-ground for the early English water-colorists. Box-
ford is a typical English village with two closely built, wind-
ing streets (like the Boston "cow-paths"), old red brick build-
ings with thatched roofs, not a few of them probably of seven-
teenth century date. There is also a free grammar school,
founded by Queen Elizabeth, for twenty boys. Opposite the
" Fleece Inn " at the upper end of the village, and reached by
a foot bridge over the little river Box, is the pleasant old
house occupied by Mr. Kingsbury, a house builder in Box-
ford, with flower-garden and lawn. The compiler met two
or three members of the Kingsbury family, now living in
Boxford, who received her with old-fashioned hospitality,
and they stated that they were descended from one Roger
Kingsbury, probably Roger, brother of the first James
K. of Boxford. The great flint church, St. Mary's, is the
most imposing object in Boxford, a spacious edifice of the
Early Third Pointed period. This excellent and skillful
masonry of cut flint is a marked characteristic of Suffolk
churches. " There is much variety of tracery in the many
windows of the church, and here and there suggestions of
flamboyant motifs. It includes a clerestoried nave, choir,
aisles prolonged to the east end of the choir, north and south
porches, the former of oak, with groinings of the same ma-
terial, and two bays, with open sides traceried, the other of
stone elaborately paneled, with seven niches over the
2 6 THE KINGSBURY FAMILY.
entrance with a number of inscriptions nearly obliterated,
and at the west end an embattled tower containing a
clock and eight bells, and surmounted by a slender spire or
fleche. With the exception of the north porch the whole build-
ing was restored in 1888. There is a carved oak door in the
tower, and a small door in the south choir aisle, in addition
to the entrances from the porches."* Floods of light stream
through the great windows, but the interior of the church
is quite plain, with few monuments. Probably the Puritans
visited the church in Cromwell's time, and destroyed the
stained glass and ancient monuments, as they did in so
many Suffolk churches. There is a mural tablet with a
singular epitaph :
In memory of
Elizabeth Hyam
of this Parish, for the
fourth time a Widow;
who by a Fall, that
brought on a mortification
was at last
hastened to her End
on the 4th May, 1748,
in her 113th Year.
Our name occurs frequently in the Parish Register, and
James Kingsbury, the father of Henry and John and Joseph,
left a sum of money to be distributed to the poor of the
parish at his funeral, and he and his parents left directions
in their wills that they should be buried in the churchyard.
About a mile from the village, situated in the parishes of
Boxford, Stoke, and Assington, is Peyton Hall, now a farm-
house, an estate granted by William the Conqueror to Rob-
ert Malet, the progenitor of the ancient family of Peyton,
by whom the manor was long possessed. The widow Annis
Kingsbury of Boxford, in her will, dated 1602, gives to her
son Henry, "my Indenture of Lease which I hold under Sir
John Peyton, of Iselham in the County of Cambridge,
Knight."f
Assington, which is also a place of interest for the Kings-
burys, lies close by Boxford, but it is a much smaller village,
and the old Hall, a fine Jacobean building, where the Gur-
* Essex Antiquarian, 1 '/, 101-5.
tSir Roger de Peyton of Peyton Hall, who died 25th Edward III (135O, married
the lady Christiana de Apleton, who was heir to land in Boxford and Haxwell, and
who died 19th of Edward II, and was buried at Stoke Neyland with great pomp.
SOUTH PORCH OF ST. MARY'S CHURCH, BOXFORD, SUFFOLK.
•*.
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FAMILY "NAME IN ENGLAND. 2J
dons lived in Henry Kingsbury's time, and still live, and the
closely adjoining beautiful little church of St. Edmund, both
stand in the park, some distance from the hamlet, and on the
site of the field of the last battle fought between the Saxons
and the Danes, in 1016, and known as Assandun. Groton, the
home of the Winthrops, is only half a mile from Boxford,
and Edwardstone the same distance in another direction. At
Edwardstone the church and " great house " are also close
together in a beautiful park. It was formerly a village of
considerable note on account of the Montchensy family, who
once resided there, and there was also a religious house, a
cell to the monastery at Abingdon, near Oxford. The parish
registers are unfortunately lost before 1645, and that is
probably the reason why we cannot find the baptisms of
more of the particular Kingsbury family that we want.
Stoke-next-Nayland, where there were many Kingsburys
about 1600, lies two or three miles south of Boxford. The
church tower, one of the finest in the County, deserves special
notice. The west doorway is very rich, and the paneling
of plinth and battlement very fine. In one of the chan-
cel chapels, enclosed by screenwork, are monuments for the
two wives of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who fell at
Bosworth. Constable, writing con amore of his native valley,
thus describes this place : " Stoke Nayland, though by no
means one of the largest, certainly ranks with the great
churches of the Eastern Counties, with its majestic
tower, which, from its commanding height, may be said to
impart a portion of its own dignity to the surrounding
country." Between Stoke-by-Nayland and Shelly stands
Gifford's Hall,* a fine residence of the age of Henry VIII
(1538), although some parts are much older. It will readily
be seen how closely connected geographically all those
places are, and what close relationships there must have
been among the settlers who joined Governor Winthrop's