Anal COLLECTIONS FOR A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE EDITED BY The William Salt Archæological Society, VOLUME VI. NEW SERIES. PART II. "And in this undertaking, the Reader may see what Furniture (though it lie disperst) our Publick Records will afford for History: and how plentifully our own may be supplied and improved, if pains were taken therein for what is hitherto made publick, hath been collected, chiefly out of old Annals, and they filled with few things but such as were very obvious, nay the Annalists themselves (for the most part residing in Monasteries) too oftened byass'd with Interest, and Affection, to Times and Persons: But on the contrary, in our publick Records lye matter of Fact, in full Truth, and therewith the Chronological part, carried on, even to days of the Month. So that an industrious Searcher may thence collect considerable matter for new History, rectifie many mistakes in our old and in both gratifie the world with unshadowed verity."-(ASHMOLE's History of the Garter.) LONDON: HARRISON AND SONS, ST. MARTIN'S LANE, Printers in Ordinary to His Majesty. 1903. OF THE FAMILY OF Wrottesley of Wrottesley, CO. STAFFORD. BY MAJOR-GENERAL THE HON. GEO. WROTTESLEY. Reprinted from "THE GENEALOGIST Exeter : WM. POLLARD & Co. LTD., PRINTERS, NORTH STREET. 1903. PREFACE. I feel I owe an apology to the Members of the Wm. Salt Society for introducing into their Proceedings a history of my own family; my excuse for doing so, is the destruction of the Wrottesley muniments by the fire of December 1897, and the fact that the history being a reprint from the pages of The Genealogist, will not throw an undue burden upon the finances of the Society. After the loss of the family papers in 1897, I proposed to my friend Mr. Harwood, the Editor of The Genealogist, that he should print the copies which I had taken of the Wrottesley deeds in that magazine. To this he replied that he would much prefer a history of the family, introducing the deeds into it, and the following pages are the result of this suggestion. Up to the date of the fire, the deeds at Wrottesley had been unusually well preserved. When I first began to examine them in 1860, there was a complete series of family documents identifying the successive owners of the property from the reign of Henry II down to the above date. All the most important of these as far down as the Tudor era, have been incorporated into the history in their original form. For the encouragement, however, of archæologists who have to deal with the history of an ancient family which has lost its muniments, I may mention that every step of the pedigree from the reign of Henry II to the present time is proved by public documentary evidence which is accessible to all the world. This evidence will be found given in detail in the text of the history. It illustrates the value of the Public Records for the elucidation of local and family history, and the mine of wealth which lies under our feet, which has passed almost unnoticed before the rise of the modern school of archæology. As the manor of Wrottesley was held under a religious house, the origin of the family can be clearly traced from |