Manatons in the Tudor Era
At the Battle of Stoke in 1487, the throne of King Henry VII was defended securing the continuation of the reign of the Tudors. At that battle there was a Thomas Manaton (Mannington) who was knighted. It is probable that he was under the command of Sir Robert Willoughby (1452-1502), then future Baron Willoughby de Broke, who was one of Henry Tudor's commanders on the field. Several Cornish and Devon families were represented by those knighted at the battle. And, as lord of the manor of Callington and Beer Ferrers, Willoughby’s estates were adjacent to the Manatons. It is also likely that the Manatons sympathies were Lancastrian as family tradition asserts that John Manaton of Manaton and John Manaton of Beer Ferrers both received pardons during the reign of Edward IV.
In terms of connections by marriage it is not surprising to find Manaton associations with local gentry families. John Manaton (d. 1507) the elder, married Margaret Kyngdon whose family originated in Quethiock. John and Margery had two sons. John Manaton, the younger, and Stephen Manaton, Chaplain in the parish of St Stephens by Saltash whose burial in 1550 (Capellanus sepultus) is recorded in the parish register. John Manaton, the younger, married a daughter of Trecarell, likely placing John as either uncle or even brother-in-law to Henry Trecarrell (d 1544) of Trecarrell manor. In addition to Trecarrell manor near Lezant, this family had connections to the borough of Tavistock; the Drake family leased Crowndale from the Trecarells where Sir Francis Drake was born later in the century.
As an adult, Sampson Manaton (d. 1571), would have straddled the transition into The Elizabethan era. By his first marriage to Isabella, the daughter of John Boscawen, Sampson Manaton (d. 1571), son of John Manaton, the younger was brother-in-law to Richard Courtenay, from a cadet lines of the Earls of Devon, who married Jane Boscawen, and to Margaret Trethurf one of the heiresses to Edward Courtenay (d. 1556), the Earl of Devon. Margaret married John Boscawen (d. 1524). Isabelle predeceased Sampson Manaton who married secondly Alice Tremayne (d. 1581/88). Alice’s cousin Edmund Tremayne (d. 1582) was a servant of Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon. These Tremayne’s were intermarried with the Courtenays of Ugbrook and Edmund Tremayn’s brother-in-law was Sir William Courtenay, next heir to the Earl of Devon, had the title then been retained by the family. Sir William Courtenay was killed at the siege of St. Quentin in 1557. Edmund Tremayne’s twin nephews Nicholas and Andrew met the same fate later at New Haven in 1564.
Alice was also second cousin through her maternal line to the Earl of Bedford who had assumed the pre-eminent role of the exercise of power in the west, after the death of the Earl of Devon, on behalf of the crown. This connection might also have been important. Her cousin Edmund Tremayne who had been in exile in Italy with the Earl of Devon when he died in 1556, at some time after entered the service of the 2nd Earl of Bedford. With the accession of Elizabeth and Bedford’s appointment as lord lieutenant of Devon, Edmund received a number of local offices, then went to court.
The influence of the Earl of Bedford could be felt at Tavistock through the presence of persons at Tavistock with important connections at court. The Earl of Bedford’s second son, John, Lord Russell (c.1553-1584) had married Elizabeth Cooke (1527-1609) whose sister Mildred Cooke (1526-1589) married, as his second wife, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520-1598), the English statesman and chief adviser of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign. Through the Cooke family there were also marriage connection to the Killigrews and to Sir Nicholas Bacon, who married Anne Cooke (1528-1610), the mother of Sir Francis Bacon and Anthony Bacon. It is not surprising then to see the reach of Cecil as far away from court as places like Tavistock. For example, Nathaniel Bacon was MP for Tavistock 1571, 1572 and Edward Bacon, MP in 1584.
Sampson’s eldest son Edward Manaton married Katherine. John Hart, father of Katherine, was kinsmen to another John Hart (d. 1574), the English orthographer, who was appointed Chester Herald 18 July, 1567, by Sir William Cecil, Principal Secretary to Queen and Master of the Court of Wards and Liveries. John appears to have been in the service of Cecil for some years. His connection to Devon is established in the Visitations for Middlesex and by the same arms born by John Hart of Stoke Climsland – Gules, a bend between three fleurs de lis argent the bend charged with a crescent. Katherine’s brother, Robert Hart (d. 1589) was married to Joane (d. 1606), the daughter of Robert Smith (d. 1569) of Tregonnack. Her brother, Robert Smith was married to Joan Killigrew, connected to William Cecil who was brother-in-law to Henry Killigrew. This may explain how John Smith secured election as MP of Camelford in 1559, as well as pointing to Cecil’s hand in both the heir of John Hart of Stoke Climsland and John Hart the orthographer.
The Harte pedigree recorded in the Visitation of Cornwall also reflects a marriage between the Harte and Tremayne families. In terms of generations, a sister of John Tremayne (1450-1504) might be the correct correlation. There are sisters to John whose names are recorded without husbands in the Visitation of Devon. If this association of generations is correct, then Edmund Tremayne (1525-1582) of Collacombe who was MP for Tavistock in 1559 would have been cousin 2nd cousin to his contemporary, John Hart the younger who can be identified in Tavistock parish records and was the holder of Crebeare inherited through his mother. Katherine Harte, his daughter married Edward Manaton of Manaton. Edward’s father Sampson Manaton (d. 1571) of Manaton was married to Alice Tremayne, cousin to Edmund Tremayne (1525-1582). So, Edward Manaton was second cousin to Edmund Tremayne, as his father-in-law John Harte may also have been. And here, we have the possibility that this association contributed to the marriage decision. Perhaps, again, for both Katheine and her brother Robert Harte.
It is difficult to evaluate the direct influence on the Manatons of these relations at court; though related the influence could be attenuated. However, it is also interesting to consider that when Edward Manaton and his brother Henry Manaton were sold the manor and lordship of Calliland with the right of presentation to St Sampson’s in 1591, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, was then Lord High Treasurer and an officer of the Exchequer. By 1603, the lordship of Calliland was sold to John Trelawney, the husband of Elizabeth Killigrew, and daughter of Henry Killigrew and Katherine Cooke, and niece to Cecil.
Perhaps the most striking connection to figures at court was the marriage of Ambrose Manaton, Edward Manaton’s third son. Ambrose Manaton commanded the Bark Mannington, in the squadron serving under Sir Francis Drake against the Spanish Armada. Ambrose “of Lower Manaton” in Cornwall married Anne of the Roane family of Hounslow, Middlesex. Anne’s family is of particular interest. Anne’s father was Anthony Roane, an Auditor to Queen Elizabeth. Anne’s mother was Audrey, the daughter of Thomas Fernely of Cresting, Suffolk. Anne’s aunt Anne Fernely married Sir Thomas Gresham the founder of the Royal Exchange in London and financier to Queen Elizabeth. Another aunt, Jane Fernely, married Sir Nicholas Bacon. As a consequence, Anne could count among her cousins Sir Nathaniel Bacon and Sir Nicholas Bacon, 1st Baron Redgrave. After Jane Fernely died, Sir Nicholas Bacon married Anne Cooke, sister-in-law to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, and by his second wife, Sir Nathaniel Bacon had sons Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor and Anthony Bacon. Anne could also count among her Roane cousins Sergeants of the Scullery and Sergeants of the Poultry to the royal household.
There were also connections to other veterans of the Armada and great Elizabethan adventurers. Sampson Manaton (1553-1627), elder brother to Ambrose, and second son of Edward married Judith Hawkins. Judith’s father, William Hawkins, commanded the Griffin against the Armada. It is said that Sir Francis Drake (1545-1595), a second cousin, was raised in the Hawkins household with Judith’s father William. Her uncle Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595) was Vice Admiral against the Armada and treasure of the Navy. Another cousin was Sir Richard Hawkins (1562-1622). Judith’s first husband was Henry Whitaker (1549-89), MP the son of a prominent wool merchant who was granted arms in 1561. Sampson’s sister in law was Mariam Khan, the daughter of Mughal Emporer Akbar (1542-1606). Miriam had married William Hawkins, Judith’s brother, after William was the first Englishman to the Mughal court in India. It is Miriam’s nephew Shah Jahan (1592-1666) who built the Taj Mahal.
Sampson Manaton (1583-1642), grandson of Edward, and heir-at-law to Manaton manor, married Mary Gorges, the daughter of Tristram Gorges of St. Budeaux, Devon. Tristram Gorges had been entrusted by Sir Frances Drake with the custody of Don Pedro de Valdez, a Spaniard prisoner after the defeat of the Armada. Tristram was the son of William Gorges (d. 1584), a naval commander and Vice Admiral of the Fleet in 1580. Mary’s sister Elizabeth Gorges (1578-1649) married her cousin Sir Ferdinando Gorges (1565/8-1647) described by some as the “Father of English Colonization in North America” as a shareholder in the Plymouth Company and founder of the Province of Maine in 1622.
Among the references to the Manaton family that survive from this era are the identification of the seat of the Manaton family in South Hill on the maps of John Norden in the 1590s which were subsequently copied and published by John Speed in his The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, c.1612. Trecarrel manor can also be identified on this map.
Also, Richard Carew (1555-1620), Survey of Cornwall (1602). Carew lists the Manatons among the gentry of East Hundred in Cornwall and records their arms as “Manaton, A. on a Bend S. three mullets of the field”
