Santon Manor. The small church and the old manor house
| Stepping back a little, we might wonder how these two families became involved with this struggle. Both the Pettus and Bancroft families are found in Norfolk. It seems likely that Bancroft Senior and Pettus Senior were friends in the Norfolk area. It would seem natural for Pettus to ask Bancroft to be executor of his estate. Pettus went to London to trade. Bancroft based himself on the Manor of Santon which straddles the Little Ouse River - a border between Norfolk and Suffolk. Thomas Bancroft was born in 1575 and married Margaret in 1594 when he was 19: he died in 1636. From documents in the Norfolk Records Office, NRO MS 6886 (6F8), we know that Thomas Bancroft became Lord of the Manor of Santon when he bought the whole or part of the estate from Henry Earl of Arundel around 1624. He clearly loved the place - rebuilding the church with his own money in 1628, when he was identified as 'the sole parishoner'. The manor became a key element in the continuing tragedy of this stubborn battle of wills. |
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Santon Manor. The small church and the old manor house |
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| Apart from giving her youngest daughter a marriage dowry, the widow Margaret Bancroft, also leased the manor and other property in London to Jeremy Aylett, having the effect as before of hiding some of her wealth from the sequestrators. The consequence was a series of 'battles' to have and hold the income from the manor for one side or the other. The Latin document of May 1643, previously mentioned, recites just one of the events which that patch of land endured. As an aside, by the time Margaret Bancroft's granddaughter Ellen married Thomas Saunders, Ellen's mother [also Ellen] and her grandmother Margaret had died. Ellen Saunders then had inherited Thomas Bancrofts interest in the Santon estate and her husband bought the remaining portion [around 1662], presumably from Nathaniel Hide who was involved in the purchase with Bancroft. The Santon estate therefore was handed down from Saunders to Sir Edward Sebright, Bart, whose family sold it on - being owned in 1738 by a Mr Petiward. | |
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As a diversion from this battle we can look at another of the discovered papers linked to the Sebright family which will perhaps explain how vital the income from land was to people at that time. Setting aside the historic events of 1645 - the battle of Naseby and the battle of Langport - someone connected with the family went to collect rents from land around Allington in Kent on the 21st of October, just a week after Cromwell's terrible seige and destruction of Basing House, Hampshire, on the 14th. The neat report - 20 people listed as paying their dues - produced a total for the Quitrents of two pounds, sixteen shillings and four pence; payment in kind being 3 hens and 25 eggs. The lands where the tenants worked include places still shown on the maps: Allington, Cobham, Sutton Valence, Barming and Bardingly. From such scattered places and such small amounts - they appear to be yearly payments - the landlord made his living. |
| Apart from the total amounts of cash listed on the right of the document - payments in kind, hens and eggs, are carefully noted in the left hand corner. | |