Lords Bardolph, and several other free tenants of the Prior are named in the mentioned roll; on the Dissolution of the priory it got here to the Spelmans, and a payment farm rent of 1l. 5s. 7d. per annum is paid for it. Wirmegay. In the beginning of Henry the Fourth’s reign, it was within the palms of John Grace, with its appurtenances in Pentney: it afterwards was possessed by the Spelmans, and on an inquisition taken at Norwich in 1546, on the loss of life of John Spelman, Esq. Justice of the King’s Bench, and earlier than that, one of the crucial eminent barristers of his time; he married Elizabeth daughter and coheir of Sir Henry Frowick or Froyk of Gunnersbury in Middlesex, by whom he had 13 sons and 7 daughters; 1st, Elizabeth, married to William de Grey of Merton, Esq. John Spelman, Esq. of Narburgh, his brother, married Anne, daughter of Sir John Heveningham, by whom he had four sons and 8 daughters, of which I find, Ursula married John Potts, Esq.
1460, as was Catharine, daughter of Thomas Styward of Swaffham in Norfolk, his first spouse, in 1432; by Maron his second spouse he had two sons, John and William, and by his first wife two sons and two daughters; Katharine, married to William Clipesby of Clipesby in Norfolk; he died in 1441, and is buried at Askeby; and she remarried to Edmund Paston. 5th, Martha, to Alexander Brockdish of Brockdish in Norfolk, Esq.; Sixth, Alice, to Francis Soame of Wantesden in Suffolk, Esq.; Seventh, Anne, who died single. By his second wife he had two sons; Thomas, the eldest son, lord of Ellingham-Magna, and Brecles-Parva, married Anne, daughter and coheir of John Conyers, Esq. 2, Henry Spelman of Congham in Norfolk, Esq. Sir John Spelman of Heydon in Norfolk, who died at Oxford in 1643, and married Anne, daughter of Sir John Townesend of Raynham. Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Knevet, by whom no problem; secondly to Frances, daughter of William Saunders of Ewell in Surrey, Esq.
1581; he had two wives; Judith, daughter of Sir Clement Higham of Barrow in Suffolk, buried in 1570, by whom he had Clement and William; and Catherine, daughter of William Saunders, Esq. Ursula, daughter of Sir John Willougby of Rysley in Derbyshire, he had Clement and John, and dying in 1607 was buried right here, as his inscription reveals. After the loss of life of Alice his first spouse, he married a second spouse, named Joan, by whom he had one daughter, married to William Kemp, and 4 sons; he died in 1392; his 2d son was John, his 3d William, whose daughter and heir married to John Aleyn of Earlham; his 4th son, Stephen, who was alderman and sheriff of London, died without concern in 1404, and was buried in St. Michael Queenhith, London. Ewell in Surrey, by whom he had twin sons, and one daughter, viz. One of the numerous! Prior of Westacre was found to carry one knight’s price, right here in pure alms of the Lord Bardolf, of the present of the Narburghs, and in the 3d of Edward III. John Spelman, Esq. the eldest son, buried right here in 1545; he married Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Bleverhasset of Frense, who after his demise remarried to John Eyre, Esq of Lyn; she was buried right here in 1558, and he in 1561, as the inscription shows.
That great antiquary and most realized knight, Sir Henry Spelman, an honour to the school the place he was educated, as additionally to the town and county he was born in: his Glossary; History of Sacrilege; Treatise De non Temerandis Ecclesijs, and different numerous helpful works, will show posterity his great studying; his Icenia or History of Norfolk, which he supposed, was the first design of that variety in relation to this county, that I’ve met with, and nice pity it’s, that each one his collections on that topic, besides the fragment of that name, published in his Posthumous Works, should be dissipated and lost; but to rescue his person from the same fate, the writer of this work hath right here inserted his likeness, taken from an unique picture painted in his own time, in honour of him who was so helpful a member to his country, and so great a promoter of the laudable study of the final antiquities of the kingdom, and the actual ones, of this his native county; he was sheriff of Norfolk in 1605, and died at London in 1641, having married Eleanor, eldest daughter and coheir of John le Strange of Sedgeford in Norfolk, Esq.