No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Cottons at Whittington Court
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
The tribulations suffered by the aging Sir John Denham following his second marriage in 1665 to the young and beautiful Lady Mary Brooke were the subject of scandalized gossip amongst his contemporaries. Little is known about his first wife Anne Cotton of Whittington, Gloucestershire, whom he married in 1634 when he was only 19. Denham benefited considerably from this marriage for, with her sister Appolina, Anne was heir to the estates of a prosperous Gloucestershire gentry family that included the manor of Horsenden, Buckinghamshire, as well as the manor of Whittington and the estate of Gubshill, near Tewkesbury. At a division of the estates between the sisters, Horsenden was assigned to Anne and Whittington to Appolina, but, at some point in or soon after 1642, Anne also inherited Whittington, together with its manor house now known as Whittington Court.
- Type
- Section 7: Country Houses
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001
References
Notes
1 Banks, T. H. (ed.), The Poetical Works of Sir John Denham (New Haven & London, 1928), p. 21 Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., p. 4.
3 Gloucestershire Record Office (hereafter Glos. RO), D 444/T 81, T 83.
4 This article is based on research for a history of Whittington to be published in Herbert, N. M. (ed.), VCH Gloucestershire, IX (forthcoming)Google Scholar. For Horsenden manor, see VCH Buckinghamshire, 11, pp. 254-55. The house is discussed in Kingsley, N., The Country Houses of Gloucestershire, 1 (Cheltenham, 1989), pp. 196-98Google Scholar; Cooper, N., Houses of the Gentry, 1480-1680 (New Haven & London, 1999), pp. 79–80 Google Scholar; and Brooks, A. and Verey, D., The Buildings of England. Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds (Harmondsworth, 1999), pp. 722-23Google Scholar.
5 Dictionary of National Biography.
6 Records of Bucks, IV, p. 75. The surviving moat and earthworks seem to be not Civil War relics but part of the medieval manor house site; see Pevsner, N. and Williamson, E., The Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire (Harmondsworth, 1994), p. 403 Google Scholar.
7 C[okayne], G. E., Complete Baronetage (Exeter, 1900-09), III, pp. 18–19 Google Scholar.
8 Whittington Court MSS (in the possession of Mr and Mrs J. L. Stringer), Sandywell estates maps 1816.
9 Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), E 179/247/14, rot. 9d.
10 Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, II, p. 380.
11 In addition to the demense farm at Whittington, Ralph took over from his father Puckham farm in the adjoining parish of Sevenhampton: PRO, E 178/947.
12 Glos. RO, D 444/T 79.
13 Ibid.,P364/IN 1/1.
14 Gloucester Library, Hockaday Abstracts, CCLXIX, 1519. In 1518 George was living at Gubshill near Tewkesbury where he probably had land as well as in Cheshire. For Gubshill see VCH Glos., VIII, p. 133.
15 Glos. RO, D 2957/338.2.
16 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII (hereafter L&P Hen. VIII), v, p. 37. The Crown resumed possession in the 1520S (Military Survey of Gloucestershire, 1522, ed. R. W. Hoyle (Bristol and Glos. Archaeol. Soc., Gloucestershire Record Series, VI, 1993), p. 122).
17 Glos. RO, D 444/T 81; L&PHen. VIII, XIX (2), pp. 178-79, 195.
18 Maclean, J. and Heane, W. C. (eds), Visitation of the County of Gloucester, 1623 (Harleian Society, XXI, 1885), p. 46 Google Scholar.
19 VCH Bucks, 11, p. 254; Lipscomb, G., The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham (1847-51), II, p. 334 Google Scholar.
20 Glos. RO, P 364/IN1/1.
21 Memoirs of the Dutton Family (privately printed, 1899), pp. 14-15. Margaret died in 1582.
22 PRO, PROB 11/96 (PCC 71 Wallop), fols 265V-67.
23 Visitation, 1623, p. 46, which incorrectly gives Ralph’s age in 1589 as 12.
24 PRO, C 142/297, no. 162. Richard’s widow Mary retained interest in Horsenden and Gubshill: ibid., PROB 11/109 (PCC Huddleston), fols 179V-208V; VCH Glos., VIII, p. 133.
25 Names and Surnames of Able and Sufficient Men in Body for His Majesty’s Service . . . within the County of Gloucester. . . 1608 . . . compiled by John Smith (1902), p. 271.
26 Ibid., p. 273. He acquired the lease of the manor farm there having relinquished the Whittington farm: Glos. RO, D 444/T 79.
27 Glos. RO, D 2957/338.1; PRO, PROB 11/119 (PCC 37 Fenner), fols 300–01. William called the chapel ‘my chapel’. The church has a large, apparently early seventeenth-century, south-east chapel; VCH Glos., IX (forthcoming).
28 PRO, C 142/336, no. 40.
29 Glos. RO, P364/IN1/1.
30 PRO, PROB u/151 (PCC 51 Skynner), fols 423V-26.
31 Nothing is known of the manor house of the Croupes, lords of the manor from the twelfth century, though watercourses south of the house may have originated as a moat.
32 PRO, PROB 11/96 (PCC 71 Wallop), fols 265V-67.
33 Remains of timber guttering have been uncovered just above the level of the upper string-course.
34 VCH Clos., XI (forthcoming).
35 N. Cooper, op. cit., p. 160.
36 Atkyns, R., The Ancient and Present State of Glostershire (1712)Google Scholar.
37 PRO, PROB 11/151 (PCC 51 Skynner), fols 423V-26.
38 Inq. p. m. Glos., 1625-42 (British Record Society, Index Library, 1893-99), III, pp. 68-70.
39 Glos. RO, P 364/IN 1/1.
40 Ibid., D 444/T 81; British Library, Eg. Chart. 844.
41 C[okayne], G. E., Baronetage, III, pp. 18-1Google Scholar.
42 Glos. RO, D 444/T 87; C[okayne], G. E., The Complete Peerage (1910-59), IV, p. 216 Google Scholar.
43 Glos. RO, D 2593/2/169, 180; Kelly’s Dir. Glos., 1863, p. 373.
44 Plans of house at Whittington Court.
45 Gloucestershire Countryside, April-June 1957, p. 185.