Short biographies from the book “Thomas Fermor and the Sons of Witney“ about members of the Fermors of Somerton mentioned in a YouTube video by Tim Guile.
While conducting some research, I discovered the following video posted on YouTube by local historian Tim Guile:
For more than one hundred years, the English monarchy tried to rid the country of Catholicism through ever-increasing legislation and punishment. The Fermor family allowed a small Roman Catholic community to flourish in Somerton and Hardwick during most of the post-Reformation period.[1] The Fermors’ influence was especially noticeable in the religious life of the villagers, with the Catholic faith openly practiced.
Included below are excerpted and edited short biographies of those mentioned in the video.
William Fermor and Somerton, Oxfordshire
The Aston Family owned Somerton since at least 1327. In February 1504, William Fermor paid £287 to William Aston for the reversion to the moiety of the manor of Somerton. Aston held Somerton until 21 April 1504, when he conveyed his moiety of Somerton to a group of feoffees which included William Fermor’s brother Richard Fermor and step-brother Richard Wenman. The quitclaim deed also included ten messuages, ten gardens, four hundred acres of land, one hundred acres of meadow, sixty acres of pasture, forty acres of wood, one hundred shillings rent in Somerton, Fretewell, Dunstewe, Fewecote, and Tusmore, several fisheries of Charwell, and the advowson of the church of Somerton.[2] Two years later after the death of Aston, Somerton was finally “covenanted with William Fermor.”
Another moiety of the manor of Somerton which had been held by the Earls de Grey reverted to the Crown in December 1495 with the second attainder of Francis Lovell, 1st Viscount Lovell. William purchased the moiety in 1498 but was received fourteen years later in 1512 by formal grant from Henry VIII at a yearly rent of £15 11s.
With the manor re-united and William in possession, he at once built a new residence house on the rising ground southeast of the village upon the river Cherwel. It was here that William resided for almost forty years.[3]
William Fermor and Hardwick, Oxfordshire
After purchasing a third part of Hardwick from Thomas Colyer and his wife Margery in 1514,[4] William rebuilt the house by 1520. In 1523 William Spencer, son of Robert Spencer and Elizabeth Arden, released to Fermor his right to a share of the manor. The remaining third part seems to have been held in 1511 by Edmund Bury, who conveyed it to Edward Chamberlain, but William evidently acquired this share also by 1548, when he made a settlement of the whole manor.[5]
Hardwick had a separate church around 1249 or 1250 when William D’Aundeley, the lord of the manor, presented, but two years later, the advowson was with the Knights Hospitallers. In 1532, by reason of a grant from the Knights Hospitallers, William presented. After the suppression of the Knights Hospitallers in 1540, Henry VIII sold the advowson in 1545 to John Pope of London, an associate of William Fermor. The advowson then descended with the manor with the Fermors presenting until the mid-nineteenth century. For Hardwick in the reign of Edward VI, its location and size under the protection of the rich Fermor family allowed a small Roman Catholic community to flourish during most of the post-Reformation period.[6]
Will of William Fermor
William Fermor died on 29 September 1552, having made his will eighteen days earlier.[7] His wife Elizabeth (Norrys) Fermor was appointed sole executrix and directed to “bear and pay all my funerals after a convenient degree and order and with no pomp or vainglory.” As neither of his four wives bore any children, the principal beneficiaries were the sons of his brother Richard Fermor namely John, Jerome, and the youngest Thomas as heir.
At the church of Somerton, the east end of the south aisle was lengthened and converted into a chantry by William Fermor. He installed new windows, constructed a new entrance, and built a round-headed arch giving access to the aisle from the chancel. The aisle became the burial-place of the Fermor family noted for the fine sixteenth century monuments and the family maintained the chantry until the end of the nineteenth century.
Thomas Fermor of Somerton
Richard Fermor’s youngest son, Thomas Fermor, was born by 1526. On his uncle’s death in 1552, Thomas inherited Somerton subject to the life interest of his aunt who was still lady of the manor as late as 1568.[8] Thomas could afford to wait for his inheritance, having wed by 1552 to Frances Horde, the only child and heiress of Thomas Horde of Hord Park or Bridgnorth Park, Bridgnorth, by his wife Dorothy Harpur.[9]
Frances died 10 July 1570 and was buried at Astley Abbots on 12 July.[10] Thomas remarried to Bridget Bradshaw, the daughter of Henry Bradshaw of Halton, Buckinghamshire, and the widow of Henry White of South Warnborough, Hampshire. Thomas and Bridget had one son and two daughters: Richard Fermor who married first Jane Lacon and secondly Cornelia Cornwallis; Anne, who died 12 April 1575 and was buried at Somerton; and Mary, who married Francis Plowden.[11]
While a staunch Catholic who may have been on Queen Mary’s side in reversing Henry VIII’s Protestant reformations, Thomas Fermor was not one of the Members of Parliament who “stood for the true religion” against the initial measures for the restoration of Catholicism.
Thomas was one of the Shropshire Catholics who sheltered the priest John Felton after 24 May 1570 when Felton posted Pope Pius V’s Regnans in Excelsis excommunication of Elizabeth I to the gates of Edmund Grindal, the Bishop of London. Wanted for treason and implicated by his friend William Mellowes during torture, Felton was arrested on 04 August, racked, convicted, condemned to die by execution, hanged, and quartered alive on 08 August.
By 1573, Thomas Fermor had succeeded his aunt Elizabeth (Norrys) Fermor. For twenty-eight years, Thomas lived at Somerton, although a land deed from 02 February 1575 describes him as “Thomas Farmor of Chynnor” a location thirty miles from Somerton yet must have been special to Thomas for him to bequeath 20s. to the “pooreste people inhabitings in Chinnor.”[12]
Tomb of Thomas and Bridget Fermor
Bridget died on 15 June 1580; Thomas Fermor died on 08 August 1580. Thomas’ will was written on 15 June 1580 – interestingly the same day as when his wife Bridget died – and probated on 13 August 1580. He was buried in Somerton Church next to his wife Bridget with all of the recognized rites and customs of the time.
Thomas left £40 for the erection of an alabaster tomb to be erected over his grave. By indenture made on 20 September 1582 between George Shirley of “Staunton Harrolde in ye county of Leic’esquier,” Richard Roiley of “Buron uppo Trente in ye county of Stafford, Tumbe maker,” and Gabriell Roiley, the son of Richard Roiley, the details of the tomb’s construction and appearance were fully described and witnessed by William Tortone, John Toplines, and Thomas Nodine. Having previously constructed the tomb of George’s father, John Shirley, the Roiley’s were well known tomb-makers from Burton, an area celebrated for its alabaster.[13]
Thomas’ will also illustrates “seigneurial Catholicism” by leaving rent-charges or leases to a number of servants who, or whose families, can be traced among Oxfordshire Catholics for some years afterwards. Among his charitable bequests was the “Castle Yard in Somerton and the Chappell therein standing” for procuring a license and erecting a free school in the chapel for the service of God, the Crown, and the commonwealth. His will also stipulated that the schoolmaster should be nominated by one of the ecclesiastical, secular, or academic dignitaries of Oxfordshire or by the Lord of Somerton. The executors invested £160 in land in Milcombe in Bloxham parish, and the chapel in the castle courtyard, which had fallen into disrepair after the penal laws banned Roman Catholic services, was converted into a school building.[14]
Sir Richard Fermor
In 1596 after attaining his majority, Sir Richard Fermor (son of Thomas and Bridget Fermor) inherited Somerton and Hardwick. The executors of his father’s will had well-fulfilled their trust for Sir Richard to financially purchase the manor of Tusmore from Thomas and Bridget Williamson in 1606, uniting Tusmore with Hardwick.
Sir Richard married early to Jane Lacon, daughter of Rowland Lacon of Willey, who died young after bearing a son, Thomas, and a daughter, Jane. At the age of twenty-five in about 1601, Sir Richard remarried to Cornelia Cornwallis, the third daughter of Lucy Neville and Sir William Cornwallis.
Sir Richard died at the age of forty-six on 07 January 1642 without a long or serious illness, having made his will on the day of his death, and his burial at Somerton Church was hurried.[15] A grandiose monument was constructed immediately beside the table tomb of his parents. Soon after his death, the House of Commons seized Sir Richard’s money because he was a papist.
Sir John Fermor
Sir Richard’s son John Fermor was knighted on 29 August 1624 at Shotover Lodge owned by Sir Timothy Tyrrell,[16] and dying the next year, left his widow Cecily Compton, the daughter of Sir Henry Compton of Brambletye, Sussex, to remarry Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour. Sir John’s will dated 10 July 1625 and probated 23 November 1625 names his father as executor, made provisions for his wife “dame Cicelie, and my child, if she be with child,” and mentions his wife’s grandmother “my Lady of Dorsett.”[17] Sir John’s tomb in the church at Somerton shows the young knight reclining, under a melancholic Latin epitaph.
At this time in 1625, it is believed Sir Richard moved from Somerton into Hardwick. As the Somerton was part of her dowry, Cecily moved and remained there during her life.
Jane Fermor and Colonel Thomas Morgan
Sir Richard Fermor’s eldest daughter, Jane Fermor,{115} married Colonel Thomas Morgan of Weston-under-Wetherley, Warwickshire, son of Anthony Morgan, Esquire of Mitchell Town, Monmouthshire, and Bridget Anthony, daughter and heir of (another) Anthony Morgan of Heyford.
At his own expense, Morgan, a Royalist, raised a troop of horse and fought on 16 July 1643 in the Battle of Roundway Down near Devizes, Wiltshire. In the first Battle of Newbury, Berkshire, Charles I personally led the Royalist forces, whose cavalry of seven thousand horses outnumbered the Roundhead cavalry led by Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. As the landscape of open fields would have exposed Essex’s troops, he chose to engage the Royalists under the concealment of the hedges, ditches, and sunken lanes. Entangled in the dense brush, Morgan was killed on 20 September 1643 and was buried in the Fermor aisle of St. James Church at Somerton with a black marble slab inscribed in his memory.[18]
Philip Farmer is the author and publisher of “Thomas Fermor and the Sons of Witney” tracing the family history from 1420 to 1685, and “Edward Farmar and the Sons of Whitemarsh” following their 1685 arrival from Ireland into Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Harlan County, Kentucky.
[1] Stapleton, History of the Post-Reformation Catholic Missions in Oxfordshire (1906), p.80; Lobel, A Victoria History of the County of Oxford, vol.6 (1959), pp.168-173.
[2] CP 25/1/191/31, No. 58. The other querents were William Bulcombe, Edward Cope, Richard Eryngton, William Eryngton, John Byllyng, and Edmund Hobell.
[3] Stapleton, History of the Post-Reformation Catholic Missions in Oxfordshire (1906), p.66; Collins, The Peerage of England, vol.5 (1768), p.48.
[4] Perhaps the Margery who had previously married William Gygour.
[5] Lobel, A Victoria History of the County of Oxford, vol.6 (1959), pp.168-173.
[6] Stapleton, History of the Post-Reformation Catholic Missions in Oxfordshire (1906), p.80; Lobel, A Victoria History of the County of Oxford, vol.6 (1959), pp.168-173.
[7] Hutchens, “Will of William Fermor of Somerton,” Oxfordshire Family History Society (OFHS.uk). nd. An abstract also found in Blomfield, History of the Present Deanery of Bicester, Oxon (1882), p.105. The will has been included in a separate chapter.
[8] Baker, The History and Antiquities of the County of Northampton, vol.1 (1822), p.707.
[9] Grazebrook et al, The Visitation of Shropshire, Taken in the Year 1623, pt.1 (1889), p.183.
[10] Clark-Maxwell, “The Chantries of St. Leonard’s Church, Shropshire,” Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, ser,4 vol.8 (1920), p.54. “On the demise of Frances Fermor without issue, Holicote passed to her cousin-german Thomas Horde, who held it in 1594, and was living 1603. He was son of John Hord (first cousin of Frances Fermor) by Katharine, daughter of Adam Otley of Pitchford…” (Purton, “Some Account of the Manor of Chetton,” Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, ser.2 vol.6 (1894), pp.184-185.)
[11] Blomfield, History of the Present Deanery of Bicester, Oxon (1882), pp.11-12, 122; Plowden, Records of the Chicheley Plowdens, A.D. 1590-1913 (1914), pp.10, 51.
[12] Thorpe, “Fermor, Thomas (by 1523-80), of Horde Park, Bridgnorth, Salop and Somerton, Oxon,” The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558 (1982); Stapleton, History of the Post-Reformation Catholic Missions in Oxfordshire (1906), pp.66-67; Shirley, “Original Documents Extracts From The Fermor Accounts, A.D. 1580,” Archaeological Journal, vol.8 no.1 (1851), pp.179-186; Gomme, The Gentlemen’s Magazine Library, pt.9(1897),pp.208-215.
[13] Macklin, The Brasses of England (1907), p.10. Richard Roiley of Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire.
[14] Reports of the Commissioners For Inquiring Concerning Charities in the Hundreds of Banbury & Bloxham et al (1826), pp.144-146. The report contains a short history, detailed list of landholders, and contribution of payments. “There are now 14 or 15 free children in the school, who are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic… (p.146)”
[15] Blomfield, History of the Present Deanery of Bicester, Oxon (1882), p.120. The will of Richard Fermor, probated on 08 June 1643 at Oxford, “mentions son Henry Ffermor, daughter in law Ursula, daughter Lucy Peter, daughter Jane Morgan, grandson Richard Fermor under age, and grandchildren Peter and Henry Ffermor and their sisters Mary and Anne Ffermor all under age. Mentions grandchildren, the children of my daughter Lucy Peter. Other relatives include Chamberleyn, Lek, etc.. Sons in law William Peter and Thomas Morgan, nephew George Gyfford, and Edmund Plowden, son of Ffrancis Plowden the younger to be Executors.”
[16] Shaw, The Knights of England, vol.2 (1906), p.186.
[17] Blomfield, History of the Present Deanery of Bicester, Oxon (1882), p.120.
[18] Hamilton, The Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses Regular of the Lateran, at St Monica’s in Louvain, vol.2 (1906), pp.3-4.
Title photo: Poliphilo. “St James’ parish church, Somerton, Oxfordshire, seen from the southeast.” 2013. CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication of Creative Commons.
