As text:-
Between the earlier Jermys, Hewetts and Wingfields, and the later Barnardistons, the manors of Brightwell, Foxhall and Kesgrave were owned for just ten years by the Essingtons, a family with Gloucestershire origins. If this was a surprising interruption to the local succession, it was an even stranger interlude in the prosperous career of Thomas Essington, who like his father William was a wealthy and influential member of the third senior City livery company, the Drapers. Father and son in succession held the lease of part of the premises of the former Drapers’ Hall in St Swithin’s parish, and both were, in their turn, Warden and Master. Their origins at Cowley, Gloucestershire are shown by William Essington remembering the poor there in his will.
Thomas Essington bought the estates from Sir Richard Wingfield, held his first manor courts in 1653, was High Sheriff of the county in 1657 and returned to London in 1663 or 1664, having sold everything to Sir Samuel, third son of Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston of Kedington. Samuel was created a baronet in 1663, held his first courts in Colneis hundred in 1664, demolished the existing house and built the Brightwell Hall which was later demolished.
Born about 1609, in the early 1640s Thomas Essington married Anne, daughter of John
Janson, another London Draper, of Moorfields and Ashby St Ledgers, Northants. They had
five sons and two daughters, but only three survived childhood; John, Martha and Samuel
outlived their father. John and Martha were christened at St Margaret, Lothbury, in 1645 and 1649 respectively. Samuel was born at Brightwell on 16 December 1653 and baptised that Christmas Day. In February 1654, Essington had to bury his ‘shepheard’ John, for whom no surname is given. Robert Brownrigg, Esq., estate steward, arranged for extensive and detailed surveys of some of Essington’s manor lands in 1656; they and the rentals survive. 2 other children, Thomas (aged 5) and Anne (aged 17), died young and were buried at Brightwell.
Thomas Essington lost no time in putting things ecclesiastical in order in the tiny parish of Brightwell. What happened to John Skynner, vicar since 1636, we do not know. He was not ejected, but no registers survive before those begun by Daniel Norris, the Gloucestershire man who came to be vicar of Brightwell-cum-Foxhall from 1653. Later that decade he took the rich living of Tetbury and held it to his death in 1687. According to the Suffolk antiquary Matthias Candler writing in 1662,
Thomas Essington, Esq., hath repaired, at his own charge, the almost ruined church, built anew the steeple, and in a comely sort, built seats in the church and chancel. Under the chancel is a very fair vault, on the mouth whereof lies a marble, which hath engraved on it ‘the Essingtons’ vault’. In the chancel bee two small monuments of alabaster exceedingly comely and faire, which were the work of a German, whose ancestors were Italians.
These monuments are for Essington’s children Thomas who died in 1656, aged five (Fig. 131), and Anna who died in 1660 aged Seventeen (rig.132), and each child is quoted verbatim Thomas ‘His owne words Christ will rais nice” and Anna ‘Her dieing words “No mortall shall put on Immortality”. The ledger-slab over the family vault bears the date ‘A” 1662 and two shields with the arms of Essington and Janson joined in a lovers’ bow (Fig. 133). The inscription, after giving details of the Essingtons, continues: The south side of the vault in the chancel of this church at Brightwell belong to them and there posterity for a place of buriall to soe many of them as shall desire it: The Essington children. however. were never, joined by their parents.
Proof that Thomas Essington returned to the City in 1663 or 1664 comes from a will dated 21st December 1673 which can only be his. It was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 19th January following. Thomas, after a lengthy and pious preamble, desired to be buried with his father at St Swithin’s and left a widow Anne and three children: John, Samuel and Martha. The last married to Daniell Mercer with a dowry of £3000. On the familv’s return to London, Thomas resumed his career in the Drapers’ Company, becoming Warden in 1663 and Master in 1664. Presumably the Essingtons were left homeless like so many others after the Great Fire of early September 1666, for on the 29th of that month Thomas bought a dwelling house in Bury Street from Peter Blackborow, and on 18 April the following Year acquired the lease of a warehouse near Bevis Marks from Abraham Stanion. Perhaps, after the disaster it is no surprise that his will discloses far less wealth than did his father’s, and a line seems to have been drawn under his Suffolk period; no persons or places there are mentioned. It would be interesting to know what political, economic or domestic reasons led the family to move to Sullolk in the first place, and what made them return to London when they did. Perhaps it was as simple as bringing up the family in the country, returning when it was Thomas’s turn to assume the highest offices in the Company.
