John Cressy (abt. 1400)

BATTLE ABBEY ROLL. WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE NORMAN LINEAGES. IN THREE VOLUMES.-VOL. I

Cressy :

from the Seigneurie so named between Dieppe and Rouen. This was both a numerous and powerful family, but I have not been fortunate enough to meet with any pedigree that satisfactorily connects the various branches. The Cressys are first found in Nottinghamshire about the middle of the twelfth century, holding of Roger de Busli's Fee of Tickhill. "King Henry II. commanded Hugh de Cressy that his canons of Radeford should hold well and in peace and rightly three bovats in Hermedeston, which Avicia, the daughter of William de Taney, and William de Clerfay, gave, else the steward of Tikehill should see right done."-Thoroton's Notts. This Avicia had been the first wife of William de Clerfay (afterwards married to Albreda de Lisours), and her father's heiress, or rather co-heiress, as it is evident that Hugh was the husband of her sister. His son Roger de Cressy, in the same reign, confirms "the above gift, made by his aunt Avicia."[110] He was Lord of Hodesoke, or Hodesac, which became the principal seat of his descendants in Nottinghamshire, and a benefactor of the neighbouring monks of Blyth. He was twice married; but the dower of his widow, Cecily de Clifton, was contested in 1200 by his son and heir William (presumably her stepson), on the plea that she had not been his father's wife. However, the Archbishop of York, to whom the cause was referred, cleared the lady's character by deciding that she had been "lawfully married." William's son Hugh married a Lincolnshire heiress, Sibyl, daughter of Sir John Braytoft, who brought him an estate twice as large as his own, for in the time of the next heir the lands in Lincoln, comprising Braytoft, Rysegate, &c, were of the annual value of ,40, while those in Notts and Derby were worth no more than 20. This heir, named after his grandfather William, was twice summoned to parliament by Edward I., and twice followed him to the Scottish wars, attending the Nottingham muster in 1296, and the Carlisle muster for Lincolnshire in 1300. In the same year he was one of the Justiciars for Notts and Lincoln; then summoned to the great Council at Westminster in 1324; and from first to last appears as a man of consideration and importance in his generation; but his honours did not descend to his posterity. Neither his son Sir Hugh, styled "of Rysegate," nor his grandson Sir John, were ever again barons of the realm, and with Sir John's childless son Hugh the elder line was brought to a close in the first years of Henry IV.'s reign. Hugh had two sisters; Katherine, first married to Sir John de Clifton, and then to Ralph Makarell, and Elizabeth, the wife of Sir John Markham, who in 1407 were declared to be his heirs. Elizabeth, it would seem, was already dead, and her son Robert Markham inherited the estate in Lincolnshire, where Cressy Hall-afterwards the seat of the Herons-still keeps the old name. Hodsoke and Claypole went to the Cliftons.

Yet, long after the extinction of the principal house, "junior branches of the family seem to have lingered near the seats of their ancestors," of which, Thoroton says, "I have seen mention before and about the time of the heirs general. These I suppose were descended from some younger son of the great Cressies." There was a Thomas de Cressy of Selston, Notts, against whom "acts of extortion whilst acting under a commission of array" were alleged in 1316: and a Hugh de Cressy, who, in the previous year, had given some land to a chapel near Blyth, "because the said Hugh had committed a felony." One branch held Markham of the Fee of Busli, of whom William de Cressy was living in 1272, and Roger in 1332. The last-mentioned, another William, in 1364, "bore on his seal three crescents on a bend. The house of Hodsake had a lion rampant with a forked tail."-Thoroton. William and Peter Crecy de Markham are found in the list of the gentry of Nottinghamshire in 1433: and, two hundred years after this, Oulcotes Cressy, in the same county, still belonged to its ancient owners. William Cressy and his brother Hugh occur there in 1614, and William was the father of Roger, William, Leonard, and several other sons.-Ibid. Of yet longer continuance was the posterity of "Christopher Cressy, described in the Visitation of Notts, 1662, as of Firbeck, Yorkshire, from whom descended the Cressys of Holme and Old Cotes, and also those who by marrying the heiress of Everingham became seated at Birkin."-Hunter's South Yorkshire. It was Christopher's great-grandson, Gervas Cressy, who in 1587 became the second husband of Eleanor Everingham, Lady of Birkin. Her first marriage must have been childless, for three Everingham Cressys in succession enjoyed her inheritance, of whom the last died in 1696, leaving an only child, Dorothy, then the wife of Sir Archibald Primrose, ancestor of the Earls of Rosebery. She did not, however, inherit Birkin, which I presume must have passed to her father's brother, whose name is not given in the pedigree.

By far the most powerful branch of this house was seated in the Eastern Counties, and founded by Hugh de Cressy, who, in the latter part of the twelfth century, married the eldest of the three Cheney co-heiresses. He may have been a younger brother of his contemporary, Roger de Cressy of Hodsoke, but Dugdale leaves us in absolute ignorance as regards his lineage. Margaret de Cheney brought him, with the castle and honour of Horsford, the manor of Blyburgh in Suffolk, that had been granted to her father[111] by Henry II. As Lady of Blyburgh and Walberswick, she had Wrec of the Sea from Eye Cliff to the port of Dunwich, with a ferry boat, right of toll, and other feudal privileges. Their son, Roger, transgressed by taking to wife another great heiress without the King's license, and for this offence his lands in Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, and Buckinghamshire were sequestrated by the Crown, and only given back to him on payment of a heavy fine. This wife, Isabel, the widow of Geoffrey de Chester, was the daughter and co-heir of Hubert de Rie, dowered with half of her father's barony; and in her right he held seventeen and a half knights' fees. In 1215 he "was in Arms against King John. Whereupon his Lands were seized, and given to Robert de Ferrers. But besides this, he underwent the Sentence of Excommunication, by Pope Innocent III., for that Rebellious Action; and suffered otherwise in a very high measure, by burning of his Houses, and wasting of his Lands. Yet all this would not reclaim him; no, nor the death of that King; For, it appears that he was in Arms against King Henry III., being taken Prisoner in the Battle of Lincolne. But, after this, he made his Peace."-Dugdale. According to Blomfield, he had two sons, Hugh and Stephen, neither of whom left heirs. Hugh succeeded his father in 1245, and died about 1262.

Dugdale, on the other hand, makes this Stephen the son of Hugh, the husband of Sybil de Braytoft, and the father of the William de Cressy who was summoned to parliament by Edward I. But in this case Lord de Cressy must necessarily have succeeded to the moiety of the Barony of Rie, the honour of Horsford, Blyburgh, &c, none of which appear either among his own possessions, or those of his posterity; and his affiliation to the Nottinghamshire house seems amply made out in the careful and circumstantial pedigree furnished by Thoroton. Still it is certain that the name continued in Suffolk, for I find in Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs that Hamo de Cressy, of Grandston and Monewdon in that county, attended the array of the Hundred of Loose in 1323.

Footnotes

? It must have been through this inter-marriage that the Cressys obtained the moiety of Melton-on-the-Hill in South Yorkshire, of which the other part belonged to the Tillis. Avicia held the manor in 1153; and her daughter Sibilla de Clerfay was the mother of Ralph and Roger Tilli. It also explains a relationship that Hunter declares himself unable to account for. "The descendants of the Cressys," he says, "claimed at the Reformation to be the representatives of the founders of the nunnery of Hampole, which seems to show a connection with the Tillis, but how the connection arose none of our genealogists have shown." ? This must have been Dugdale's Roger de Cheney, who, "in the days of King Henry I., gave the Tithes of Munstre (now called Minster-Lovel) in com. Oxon, with the Tythe of all his Wools in that County, to the Monks of Eynsham." Previous