The Three Wives of Sir William Mering

Recently I have been looking at the family of Mering of Meering, Nottinghamshire. There appears to be no satisfactory pedigree of the family in existence and the published information on the family seems to be full of errors. I have constructed a pedigree based on contemporary information which is too large to post here, but I thought that I would share the information that I have found concerning the three wives of Sir William Mering who died on 15 December 1537 [1]. Hopefully someone will find this useful.

There were four William Merings in succession during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, which is one of the reasons for the contradictory information concerning them and their wives. They were:

1.       Sir William Mering, son and heir of Alexander Mering and his wife Agnes, he married firstly Millicent (d. 1419) daughter of John Beckering, widow of Nicholas Burdon (d.1403) and John Markham (d.1409) and secondly Alice, who survived him. He died shortly after making his will on 24 July 1449 [2] [3].

2.       William Mering, esquire, son and heir of Sir William Mering, and presumably Millicent, was born before 1417 because in February 1438 when he was presumably over 21, he was a surety for Thomas Middleton [4]. He is said to have married Elizabeth, one of the daughters of Thomas Neville of Rolleston, Nottinghamshire [5]. He died before 4 November 1466 when the writ of diem clausit extremum for William Meryng, esquire was issued to the escheator in Nottingham [6].

3.       William Mering, esquire, son and heir of William Mering, esquire. He had a licence to marry Agnes daughter of John Langton of Farnley, esquire on 5 June 1465 [7]. According to an inquisition into concealments held in 1509, he died on 20 October 1478, and was succeeded by Sir William Mering, “his son and heir, then aged 21 years and more” [8]. If Sir William Mering was aged over 21 in 1478, then he was not the son of Agnes Langton, but of an earlier unknown wife.

4.       Sir William Mering – the subject of this post.

According to Thoroton, Sir William Mering was “thrice married; one of his Wives I suppose to be Agnes, Heir of Henry Gloucester of Carcolston” [9]. However Thoroton’s supposition was in error and the Mering family’s possession of Car Colston, Nottinghamshire was not by inheritance, but seems to be part of the settlement of a feud between Sir William Mering and Sir Edward Stanhope, the cause of which is obscure.

In the will of Sir William Mering, part of which is recorded in his inquisition post mortem, he leaves money to pray for “all my wyffes solles, Dame Jane, Dame Blanch and Dame Margaret" [10].

Sir William Mering married firstly, Jane Hall, daughter of Thomas Hall, merchant of the Staple of Calais and of Grantham, Lincolnshire. She was the mother of all his known (and a couple of previously unknown) children. This is confirmed in the PCC will of Thomas Hall (Halle) dated 20 December 1504 and proved on 17 February 1505, which mentions Sir William Meryng, knight and Dame Jane his wife, my daughter. Thomas Hall leaves bequests to “William Mering the younger, Richard Meryng, Thomas Meryng the younger, John Mering, Francis Meryng the younger, George Mering and Jane Mering, the children of Sir William Mering and of my daughter Dame Jane his wife.” [11]. Jane died in or before 1509.

The second wife of William Mering was Blanche, widow of Thomas Chancellor (Canceller) of Sutton-at-Hone, Kent. His PCC will is dated 16 January 1507 and was proved at Lambeth on 10 July 1509. In the will he mentions his wife Blanche but no children. He leaves her, for life, all his property in Croydon, Surrey and in Binfield and Warfield, Berkshire [12]. He names his executors as his wife Blanche and Henry Saunders. She married William Mering in or before 1510 when William Meryng, knight, Blanche his wife and Henry Saunders, executors of Thomas Canceller, esquire, of Sutton at Hone, Kent, sued a number of people from Berkshire, Kent, Surrey, London and Northampton for debt (10 separate cases) [13]. Also in 1509 or 1510, William Meryng, knight and Blanche his wife sold two messuages and 1½ acres of land in Croydon [14]. Blanche died before May 1516.

On 28 May 1516, Thomas Allen in a letter written at Coldharbour House in London, to his master the Earl of Shrewsbury writes “Sir Wm. Mering tells him he is to be married on Sunday next. Though he never saw his wife till Corpus Christi day last [23 May], he was assured to her in twenty-four hours. On Sunday last they were asked in the church, and upon Sunday next [1 June 1516], by the grace of God, they shall be married. He likes her very well, for he saith she is the merest woman that ever he saw. He thinks himself somewhat too young for her, and yet she pass not forty years of age” [15]. Sir William Mering’s third wife was Margaret Heed or Hede, daughter of Henry Heed, citizen and ironmonger of London and widow of William Hawkins, “salter” of London, who died in 1515 [16]. Between 1516 and 1518, John Stynte of London, ironmonger, sued William Meryng, knight, and Margaret, his wife, executrix and late the wife of William Hawkyns of London, salter, in an action of debt upon bonds given to the said Hawkyns for fish bought of him, and partly paid for in kerseys and `baskets of wykers' [17]. Margaret apparently survived her husband. In 1538, Margaret Meryng, widow sold land in Bradford Dale in the township of Bowling to Rosamund Tempest, widow [18].

Sir William Mering’s eldest son and heir William married Anne Ormond but died v.p. and s.p. before 1518. In 1537, Sir William was succeeded by his son John who married Katherine one of the daughters of Humphrey Hercy of Grove Nottinghamshire and died on 21 March 1543. Of the other children of Sir William, I can’t find much information. His son George died before 1424.

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[1] W. P. W. Phillimore, ed., Abstracts of the Inquisitiones Post Mortem relating to Nottinghamshire, vol. 1, Thoroton Society, Record Series, 3 (1905), 221-227

https://archive.org/stream/recordseries03thor#page/221/mode/1up

[2] James Raine, ed., Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. 4, Surtees Society 30 (1869), 179n.

https://archive.org/stream/testamentaebora00socigoog#page/n191/mode/1up

[3] For his HOP biography see:

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/member/meryng-sir-william-1449

[4] Calendar of Fine Rolls, vol. 17, Henry VI: 1437-1445 (1937), 28.

https://archive.org/stream/calendaroffine17greauoft#page/28/mode/1up

[5] 'Parishes: Mering', Thoroton's History of Nottinghamshire: volume 1: Republished with large additions by John Throsby (1790), pp. 370-372

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/image.aspx?compid=76016&filename=fig86.gif&pubid=442

[6] Calendar of Fine Rolls, vol. 20, Edward IV, Henry VI: 1461-1471 (1949), 177.

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015066344873;view=1up;seq=185

[7] Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. 3, Surtees Society 45 (Durham: 1865), 337.

https://archive.org/stream/testamentaebora05claygoog#page/n348/mode/1up

[8] Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry VII, vol. 3: 1504-1509 (1955), 292, No. 488.

https://archive.org/stream/calendarofinquis03great#page/292/mode/1up

[9] http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=76016

[10] W. P. W. Phillimore, ed., Abstracts of the Inquisitiones Post Mortem relating to Nottinghamshire, vol. 1, Thoroton Society, Record Series, 3 (1905), 224.

https://archive.org/stream/recordseries03thor#page/224/mode/1up

[11] TNA PROB 11/14/462

[12] http://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research/Libr/Wills/Bk08/240.htm

[13] TNA CP40/990: http://aalt.law.uh.edu/Indices/CP40Indices/CP40no990Pl.htm

[14] C. A. F. Meekings, ed., Abstracts of Surrey Feet of Fines 1509-1558, Surrey Record Society 19 (1946), 3. (Google Books snippet)

[15] Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 2: 1515-1518 (1864), 563.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=90908

[16] Shannon McSheffrey, Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, 74. http://books.google.com/books?id=fKCt9DkyRDQC&pg=PA74

[17] TNA C 1/441/8 : http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7470871

[18] Feet of Fines of the Tudor period [Yorks]: part 1: 1486-1571 (1887), 81.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=49627