by Rosemary Sjolin
This is where Richard Brooking (BAN 25/BCM 1) was living, according to the will of his uncle, Henry Norris of Totnes, gent, when probate was granted on 9 May 1651 to Richard and to Henry’s brother-in-law, Sampson Wise of Harberton, gent. I was excited to find that the house still exists: it’s a Grade II* listed building, now called Hampstead Manor and situated just across the River Dart from Totnes. It was also immediately put on our list of Things to Do/Places to Visit next time we’re in Devon.
I’d become interested in Richard and his family when trying to sort out the Brookings in Ireland in the 17th and 18th centuries. In particular it was Hester Brooking, “heiress to Richard Brooking, gent of Totnes” who married Knightley Chetwood in Dublin on 29 August 1700, who caught my eye. There will be more to come about Hester in a later article, but first it was a matter of piecing together her family and that wasn’t easy.
Richard was born in 1622 in Totnes, mentioned in the will of his father (also Richard) in 1623, matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford on 4 December 1640 and listed as a student of Middle Temple, London in 1641. After that: “All we know are the names of his children by his first wife because they’re listed in the will of his second wife, Ann Widdon”, said Andrew. So Richard, Charles, Frances and Francis appeared on the chart, but without any details of where or when they were born or christened or indeed the name of their mother and where and when she and Richard married. It was the son Richard, I found, who moved to Ireland, married Elizabeth Boate there and was the father of Hester. He left a will, which helpfully named his brother Francis.
Equally helpful was the will of Richard Snr which appeared recently among the papers of Lilian Brooking Clark that Hilary Richardson and Tony Quinn have been working on. This will, dated 1671, lists his sons Richard, Charles and Francis and is signed by Richard Snr, Charles and Francis (Richard Jnr was in Ireland by then). There is no mention of Robert, Richard Snr’s son by Ann Widdon, who was born in 1671, but possibly after his father’s death.
Once I had an address for Richard Snr in 1651, though, the next step was to check the parish records for Hempston, or rather Littlehempston as it’s now called. Listed in the burial records were “Mrs Frances Brooking, wife of Richard Brookinge, gent, 10 May 1658” and “Dorothy, daughter of Mr Richard Brookinge, 4 November 1670”, which was a good start. Gaps in the baptism records between 1617-1645, in the marriage records between 1595-1654 and the burial records between 1612-1652, however, were frustrating, to say the least. The burials of ‘Mr Richard Broocking’ on 8 May 1671, of Mrs ‘Anne Broocking’, widow, on 26 May 1671 and of ‘Frances’, daughter of Richard Brookeing, deceased, on 4 September 1671 appear in the Totnes records.
So on a beautiful sunny Monday morning after the AGM last year we had no difficulty in persuading ourselves to set off for Littlehempston rather than heading towards the M5 and Derby. Threading our way carefully along the inevitable narrow lanes and over the little River Hems we came to the church of St John the Baptist, rebuilt to handsome effect in 1439. A local inhabitant on his morning constitutional via the churchyard advised us to look at the display inside the church of local and family history material and “Ring Jenny at the Post Cottage”. Jenny proved to be a fount of information, (also does B&B www.postcottage.co.uk) and was soon busy photocopying material for us and explaining how to find Barry, who apparently lived in a wing of Hampstead Manor. Back to Totnes we drove; 1 left Thorsten trying to find space in the railway station car parks and sped across the little footbridge, through the Totnes-Buckfastleigh line station and there was Barry busy sanitising gate-handles at his lovely little Rare Breeds Farm. “Come along to the house”, he said, “it’s a mess because we’re busy working but you’re very welcome to come and have a look”. As I was taking photos (see the picture on the front cover) and explaining yet again what my quest was all about, Thorsten caught up with us, and Barry took us round the front of the building to meet the owner of the main house. Seemingly quite unfazed by our sudden arrival, Glenn was fascinated to hear what we knew and what we had just found out from Jenny about his house, filled us in on what he knew and then invited us inside for a guided tour.
The English Heritage listing describes Hampstead as a stone-rubble, slate-roofed former farmhouse, 16th C north wing with circa late 16th C/early 17th C south wing, plus a cross-wing and an early 19th C outbuilding at the south end. At the north end of the ground floor there is a huge open fireplace with a “massive wooden bressumer and open oven”, ‘bressumer’ being a variant of ‘breastsummer’ = “a ‘summer’ or beam extending horizontally over a large opening and sustaining the whole superstructure of wall, etc”, OED. Alongside this a narrow spiral staircase leads to the (?sleeping) chamber above. “In the roof of the cross-wing there is said to be the date 1647 and the arms of the Earls of Arundel”, continues the listing. Glenn’s wife has painted a copy of these arms – a panel with 6 swallows in a 3-2-1 triangle – over the fireplace of one of the first-floor rooms and a stone version stands by the entrance to their land. ‘Hirondelle’, the French for swallow or martlet, is believed by many to be the origin of the name Arundel.
Reading up later on the ‘Arundel’ connection proved to be a rather confusing business. ‘Earl of Arundel’ (the oldest extant English earldom) is the title used by the heir to the Duke of Norfolk, (the premier dukedom). The arms of this family, the Howards and later the FitzAlan-Howards, have through the ages all been variations on a theme of a golden lion rampant, with not a swallow in sight. The (totally unconnected) Arundell family of Lanherne, Trerice and Tolverne in Cornwall, however, always used the 6-swallow panel on their escutcheon. They appear in the West Country records in the mid 1200s; at the height of their power they owned land in Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire as well as Cornwall, including what was called ‘Hamistone’ in the Domesday Book but by Tudor times had become Hempston Arundell and later ‘alias Little Hempston’. The effigy of a knight in the north aisle of Littlehempston church is believed to be Sir John Arundell, Lord of the Manor in 1243. By the 1530s ownership of the manor of Hempston Arundell seems to have passed to the Willoughby de Brokes and then to the Paulet family, who later became the Marquesses of Winchester. By the mid-1660s the manor is named as part of the jointure (widow’s estate settlement) of Isabella, wife of the 5th Marquess of Winchester as well as niece of the 22nd Earl of Arundel – linking Arundell (Hempston) with Arundel (Earl of). That, and a reference to Mary, daughter of Sir John Arundell marrying, as his second wife, Henry Fitzalan, the 19th Earl of Arundel in the mid 1500s are the only links between the Arundells and the Earls of Arundel that I’ve been able to trace.
Perhaps the date 1674 and these arms were an early version of ‘Kilroy was here’ or the date the roof was repaired or an extension completed, or a history enthusiast adding a ’17th century feature’, or a misunderstanding by the author of the English Heritage listing? We will probably never know.
It’s important to bear in mind, though, that Richard lived at Hampstead Manor during at least part of the time of the English Civil War (1642-1651), the Commonwealth (1649-1653), the Protectorate (1653-1659) and the Restoration (1660), with Parliamentarians (Puritans, Roundheads) pitted against Royalists (Cavaliers), a period when loyalties were often divided, even within families and communities. The Arundells in Cornwall were all not only prominent Royalists but also Catholics, as were the Paulets in Hampshire and the FitzAlan-Howards in Sussex. Henry Howard, the 22nd Earl of Arundel, had succeeded to the title in October 1646; his younger brother William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, became implicated in the Popish Plot fabricated by the anti-Catholic faction, executed in 1680 and beatified as a Catholic martyr.
John Walker (incidentally BCA 16), in The Sufferings of the Clergy, published in 1714, describes the fate of the Rev John Strode, Rector of Little Hempston and Dittisham in about 1645. “Being very Zealous in his Loyalty for the King (as were also several of his Relations, his two Brothers being Officers in his Majesty’s Army) He not only diligently Preached against Disobedience and Rebellion in his own Parish, but took an Occasion to Deliver the same Doctrine at the Neighbouring Town of Dartmouth … but for this Offence he some time after severely paid. For that Town being then of the Parliament’s Quarters, the Mob and some Soldiers came and Plundered his House, burnt his Books and searched diligently for his Person, declaring that if they found him, they would kill him and hang up his Quarters before his Gate. One Edmund Tucker obtained the Sequestration of it … got Mr Strode’s Wife (the Daughter of George Reynell, Esq;) and six Children violently dragged out of the Parsonage House … there remained nothing but a small Temporal Estate to Maintain himself and his large Family for about fifteen Years”. Is this perhaps a reason for Richard’s children being baptised elsewhere?
We can only guess where Richard’s sympathies lay, but maybe it is no coincidence that all his children were named after senior members of his family, apart from the second son Charles, who was perhaps named after the King. Richard might well have been the Richard Brooking who appears in this reference in the Calendar of State Papers for the Interregnum:
‘To apprehend – Trelawney and Richard Brooking for corresponding with the enemy, and seize their papers and writings’. 25 March 1650. Warrants from the Council of State and Admiralty Committee.
‘Trelawney’ was very likely Sir John Trelawney, 1st Baronet, from Trelawne in Cornwall, who distinguished himself fighting on the Royalist side in the Civil War.
N.B. Hampstead Manor is private property. Please do not try to visit it.