ORLIXGBURY HUNDRED 



show how much Lord Vaui leaned on his brother-in- 

 law in the management of his afiairs, contain an account 

 of the family disputes which resulted from a settlement 

 of the manors of Great and Little Harrowden made by 

 Lord Vault in 1571, under which Sir Thomas stood 

 security for the payment of £s°° ^^^^ ^° Eleanor, 

 Elizabeth, and Anne, the three daughters of Lord Vaui 

 by his first wife." In i 581 Lord Vaux and Sir Thomas 

 Tresham, both zealous Catholics, were summoned 

 before the Star Chamber and committed to the Fleet 

 Prison. After trial in November they were recom- 

 mitted to prison. But though Lord Vaux suffered much 

 for his religion, he and his friends were reported on by 

 a Government spy, who declared them to be 'the most 

 markable Catholics', as 'very good subjects and great 

 adversaries of the Spanish practices'.^ Henry Vaux, 

 the eldest son of Lord Vaux by his first wife, intend- 

 ing to enter religion, resigned his birthright to his half- 

 brother George, to the great indignation of his sisters.' 

 George married, without the approval of his father, 

 Elizabeth daughter of Sir John Roper and she seems to 

 have obtained entire ascendancy over her husband, and 

 even over his brother .'Vmbrose, the third son of Lord 

 Vaux, to whom the heirship had been forfeited by 

 George's marriage without his father's consent.* Am- 

 brose was dealing with the manors in I 589 by fine,' and 

 again in l 590.* George Vaux died on 13 July i 594 at 

 Harrowden. His brother Henry was already dead, and 

 the death of Lord Vaux followed on 20 August i 595.'' 

 His heir, his grandson Edward, son of George,* was 

 brought up as a strict Catholic by his mother, who, as 

 'the widow Vaux', appears in the Tresham Papers to 

 have been a cause of much trouble in the family.' She 

 was under suspicion on account of the Jesuit company 

 which, as in the case of her sister-in-law Anne Vaux, 

 frequented her house at Harrowden for some years'" 

 both before and after she was put under examination 

 there with her son, the young lord, on the discovery of 

 the Gunpowder Plot. Their house, especially his closet, 

 was narrowly searched, but no papers were found. " 

 Edward Vaux, 4th Lord Harrowden, is stated in 

 these examinations to have been then starting to ride 

 to London on 6 November to treat for his marriage 

 with the daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, 

 when news of 'broils in London' caused him to post- 

 pone his journey.'^ He did not escape the consequences 

 of being related to every one implicated in the Gun- 

 powder conspiracy and was attainted. But in 161 2 his 

 lands were restored to him," including the manors of 

 Great and Little Harrowden, and in 161 6 Lord Vaux 

 received a grant of free warren here.''* The lady for 

 whose hand he was an aspirant in the memorable 

 month of November 1605 had married before that 

 year was out, she being then a girl of nineteen, and he 

 nearly sixty, William Knollys, Earl of Banbury,'' the 

 marriage taking place less than two months after the 

 death of the earl's first wife. On 10 April 1627 she 



GREAT 

 HARROWDEN 



gave birth to a son, Edward, at her husband's house, 

 and on 3 January 1630— i to another son, Nicholas, in 

 the home of Lord Vaux at Harrowden. The earl, then 

 aged 85, died at the house of his physician. Dr. Grant, 

 in Paternoster Row, on 25 May 1632, having be- 

 queathed all his possessions to his wife by a will which 

 mentioned no children. Five weeks later she married 

 Lord Vaux. The question of the paternity of his wife's 

 sons, which was to remain in dispute for generations, 

 the House of Lords refusing to acknowledge their right 

 to the earldom of Banbury which the Law Courts 

 declared they possessed, was raised in 1 64 1, when a 

 chancery suit instituted to recover for them the pro- 

 perty of the late Earl of Banbury procured on 1 4 April 

 1641 the decision that Edward, the elder of the two, 

 was son and heir of the late earl. In June 1645 Edward, 

 returning from a tour in Italy, was slain in a quarrel on 

 the road between Calais and Gravelines, and his 

 brother Nicholas, who had journeyed to France with 

 his mother in 1644, assumed the title of Earl of Ban- 

 bury. In 1646 Lord Vaux with his wife Elizabeth 

 settled the manors of Great and Little Harrowden, the 

 rectories, advowsons, free warren, &c., to the exclusion 

 of his own heirs, on his step-son Nicholas, Earl of Ban- 

 bury,'* heretofore, apparently, called Nicholas Vaux.'^ 

 Nicholas, as Earl of Banbury, in 165 1 made a convey- 

 ance of these manors by fine,'* and on 27 February 1655 

 with his wife Isabella, daughter of Mountjoy Blount, 

 Earl of Newport, his mother, and Lord Vaux, peti- 

 tioned Cromwell to remove the sequestration on Lord 

 Vaux's estate,"and allow them to compound or sell, the 

 earl being then confined in the Upper Bench prison for 

 debt. The Countess Isabella soon after died, and on 

 4 October 1655 Nicholas married Anne, daughter of 

 William, Lord Sherard of Leitrim. His mother died 

 on 17 April 1658, and her husband Lord Vaux on 

 8 April 1 66 1, both being buried at Dorking. The 

 barony of Vaux of Harrowden then descended to Lord 

 Vaux's only surviving brother, Henry, on whose death 

 s.p. in 1662 it fell into abeyance (to be revived on 

 12 March 1838 in the person of George Charles 

 Mostyn^" of Kiddington, who traced his descent to 

 Mary Vaux, sister of Edward, 4th Lord Vaux, wife of 

 Sir George Symeon of Britwell). The manors of Great 

 and Little Harrowden passed into the hands of 

 Nicholas, Earl of Banbury, who, as no writ of summons 

 was issued to him for the new Parliament of 8 May 

 1 66 1, petitioned the king for issue of the same. Though 

 a committee of privileges reported on I July 1661 that 

 Nicholas, Earl of Banbury, was legitimate, the House of 

 Lords declined to accept the report, and he died on 

 14 March 1673-4 without having been summoned. 

 His son Charles assumed the title and succeeded to the 

 manors of Great and Little Harrowden.-' He petitioned 

 the House of Lords for a writ of summons on 10 June 

 1685 with no result; but his arraignment in Hilary 

 term of 1693 as Charles Knollys, consequent upon his 



' Com. PIms, Deeds Enr.Hil.«nd East. 



13 Eliz.; Rccov. R. Eist. 13 Eliz. ro. 1044. 



' Did. Nat. Biog.; Cat. S.P. Dim. 



'S9'-4. P- 56- 



' Hist. MSS. Com. (yar. Coll.), iii, 

 p. zvi. 



« Ibid. 



» Feet of F. Div. Co. Trin. 31 Elii. 



» Ibid. Eist. 32 Elii. 



' Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), cczliv, 121. 



• Ibid. 



» Hilt. 

 279, 4tc. 



MSS. Com. {rar. Coll.), 



'» Ibid. (Saliibury MSS.), xi, 45; Cal. 

 S.P. Dom. 1603-10, pp. 253, 259, 278, 

 300. 



" Ibid. 256. It was Sir Thomas Tres- 

 ham's son Francis whose letter of warning 

 to his brothef'in.law Lord Monteagle 

 revealed the plot. 



" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1603-10, p. 256. 



■< Pat. R. 10 Jas. I, pt. I S ; ibid. 1 1 Jas. 

 I, pt. 6. 



'< Ibid. 14 Jas. I, pt. 2. 



" He was connected by nurriage with 

 the Trcshams. 



" Recov. R. Mich. 22 Chas. I ; Feet of 

 F. Div. Co. Mich. 22 Chas. I. 



" G.E.C. Comphic Ptirage (2nd ed.), i, 

 402. 



" Feet of F. Northints. Hil. 1651. 



'" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1654-S, p. 55. 



'° Me was succeeded by his grandson 

 Hubert, 7th Lord Vaui, who died in 

 November 1935. leaving three daughters; 

 the barony is therefore again in abeyance. 



" Feet of F. Northants. Trin. 35'Chai. 

 11; Recov. R. Trin. 35 Chas. II, ro. 66. 



181 



