Jane (Isacke, Hunckes) Fermor

In determining the identity of Jerome Fermor’s wife Jane, the following information supplements what has been written in the new book Thomas Fermor and the Sons of Witney.

In the church at Towcester, Northamptonshire, is the memorial to Jerome and Jane Fermor who “lived togeath(er) in wedlock 42 years…” The coat of arms displayed above their kneeling effigies are of Fermor impaling Isacke.[1]

Jerome’s 1602 will bequeaths gifts to several nieces and nephews, yet provides no information to determine Jane’s identity.[2] Jane’s 1606 will names “my grandechildren John and Richard Lydcote” with John as “issue or eldest son of Ursula Lydcote, his mother, who was my only daughter…”[3]

Based on the county visitations of Buckingham, Berkshire, Surrey, and Oxford, John Lydcote married Ursula Hunckes and had issue Christopher, John, Jerome, Richard, and Mary.[4]

Ursula Hunckes is described as the daughter of John Hunckes. Per the 1569 visitation of Worcestershire along with other documentation, John Hunckes married Ursula Dyneley and Frances Cheyne, having issue with each wife.[5]

John Hunckes’ father Thomas died in 1558 seized of his Northwick property. Thomas’ eldest son and heir Robert settled the property in 1564 to his brother John. By 1583, John’s sons Robert and Thomas sold the property to their nephew William Childe, the son of William Childe and Anne Hunckes.[6]

When subtracting 42 years from Jerome’s death in 1602 or Jane’s death in 1606, their marriage calculates to sometime between 1560 and 1564. John Hunckes’ will probation and inquisition post mortem was conducted in 1572.[7] Either the memorial is incorrect, or Jane married a different John Hunckes.

It is more likely Jane Isacke married the son of John Hunckes, a priest who was brother to Thomas Hunckes (d.1558). This is based on the will of Thomas Fermor of Somerton who died in 1580. Fermor’s will gifts his brother Jerome and his “well-beloved nephew Nicholas and his wife…”[8] This timeline supports Jerome and Jane’s marriage in the 1560s.

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If the pedigree is correct, Jane (Isacke, Hunckes) Fermor’s grandson John Lydcote married Mary Overbury, the sister to Sir Thomas Overbury who was poisoned to death in 1613 while imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Philip Farmer is the author and publisher of “Thomas Fermor and the Sons of Witney” a 790-page biographical history of the Fermors from 1420 to 1685. The sequel “Edward Farmar and the Sons of Whitemarsh,” follows the family immigration from Ireland into Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Harlan County, Kentucky.

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[1] See also:  MacKenzie, George Norbury. Colonial Families of the United States of America, vol.6 (1917), p.278.

[2] TNA PROB 11/100/291.

[3] TNA PROB 11/107/291.

[4] Rylands, The Visitation of the County of Buckingham Made in 1634 (1909), pp.177-178; Rylands, The Four Visitations of Berkshire (1907), pp.174-176; Bannerman, The Visitations of the County of Surrey Made and Taken in the Years 1530, 1572, and 1623 (1899), pp.199-200; Turner, The Visitations of the County of Oxford Taken in the Years 1566, 1574, and in 1634 (1871), pp.121-122.

[5] Phillimore, The Visitation of the County of Worcester Made in the Year 1569 (1888), pp.81-82. Note that the pedigree is incorrect in that there are two sons named John for Thomas Hunckes and Elizabeth Dyneley.

[6] ‘Parishes: Blockley’, in A History of the County of Worcester: Volume 3 (London, 1913), pp. 265-276. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/worcs/vol3/pp265-276 [accessed 1 April 2022].

[7] TNA C 142/160/73; Index of Inquisitions Preserved in the Public Record Office, vol.2 (1963), p.191.

[8] Collins, Peerage of England (1812), p.201; Hutchens, “Will of Thomas Farmor of Somerton,” Oxfordshire Family History Society (OFHS.uk). nd. Abstract provided in Blomfield, History of the Present Deanery of Bicester, Oxon (1882), pp.11-12, with citation of “the MSS of Evelyn Philip Shirley, Esq., of Ettington Hall, Warwickshire, described in the Report of the Historical MSS Commission.”