Walter Moyle (1403 - 1480)

Born 1403 in Eastwell, Kent, England

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 31 Jul 1480 at about age 77 in London, England

Biography

Name

Sir Walter Moyle was knighted in 1465.

Birth

Date: About 1425; Alternate date: 1403

additional alternate date about 1405^[1]

Place: Eastwell, Kent

Will proved: 31 Jul 1480

Place: London, Middlesex

Notes

Through his wife Margaret he acquired the manor of Stevenston in Devon.

In the mid-fifteenth century the manor of Boughton in Kent came into the hands of Sir Walter Moyle, who bought much land in Kent including the Eastwell estates. Until his mansion was built in Eastwell Park he lived at Buckwell, still to be seen half a mile from the church. Sir Walter's eldest grandson inherited the Eastwell estates and his descendants became the Earls of Winchilsea. The second son retained Buckwell where his descendants lived, but in 1699 the heiress married a man named Breton. The Moyles and later the Bretons were the lay rectors and some-time the vicars of Boughton Aluph until the mid-nineteenth century. The chancel in the northeast of the church is known as the Moyle Chapel and here many of the Moyles are buried.

When he died, Walter was seized of numerous lands in Devonshire and Somerset, and his will was proved on 31 July 1480.

Thomas was supposed to be the grandson of Sir Thomas Moyle, the Mayor of Bodmin. (Source: Notes on Staffordshire Families). From further research it now appears that Sir Walter Moyle was the third son of Thomas Moyle of Bodmin and not his grandson. (Source: Dictionary of National Biography)

Sir Thomas Moyle (before 1500, probably at Eastwell - 2 October 1560, probably at Eastwell) was a commissioner for Henry VIII in the dissolution of the monasteries, and speaker of the House of Commons in the Parliament of England from 1541 to 1544.

He was the fourth son of John Moyle (died 1500, born in Cornwall, MP for Bodmin and Kentish, Cornish and Devon landowner) and Anne Darcy (his second wife, one of Sir Robert Darcy's daughters and heirs). By 1528, Thomas had followed his father's example and married an heiress, Katherine Jordeyne, one of the daughters of Edward Jordeyne (died 1514), a leading goldsmith at Cheapside with a manor at Raynham and employed at the mint in the Tower of London.

Moyle employed Richard Plantagenet to build Eastwell Place and (according to family tradition recorded around 1720 in Desiderata Curiosa) listened to his claims to be son of Richard III's son and allowed him to live in the grounds until his death in 1550.

Moyle made his will on 1 August 1560, leaving his wife property at Clerkenwell and his grandchildren houses in Newgate. Also leaving some land and an endowment to Eastwell parish for an almshouse, he split the remainder of his estates (in Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, Devon, and Somerset) between his daughter Amy's widower Thomas Kempe and his daughter Katherine. Katherine's husband was Sir Thomas Finch, and the couple's children were the ancestors of the earls of Winchilsea and Nottingham. (He also left £6 13s. 4d. to Clement Norton, a former vicar of Faversham who had, like Moyle, joined in the 1543 anti-evangelical prebendaries' plot to overthrowThomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury.)

Sources

1. ↑ Alternate date of about 1405 suggested by Wikidata (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17565097 : accessed 7 Feb 2018) citing Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004 rev.)

• https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LYHT-JBH

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Moyle, Sir Walter (c. 1405–1479/80) by Norman Doe

• British History online Parishes: Eastwell