Evelyn Philip Shirley

The Noble And Gentle Men Of England Evelyn Philip Shirley

THIS great and ancient Family, though not connected with this county before the reign of Henry VIII., yet, having been for a considerable time seated at Melchbourne, may with propriety be included among the Bedfordshire families, and indeed stands alone as the only one of knightly rank.* Descended in the direct male line from Hugh de Port mentioned in Domesday, in the twelfth century William son of Adam de Port took the name of St. John from the heiress of that great Norman family. Basing in Hampshire, Stanton St. John in Oxfordshire, Bletshoe in the county of Northampton, and Lydiard Tregoze in Wiltshire, both derived from the heiress of Beauchamp in the reign of Henry VI.-have successively been seats of the St. Johns, who have made themselves sufficiently remarkable both for their loyalty and disloyalty in the reign of Charles I., not to mention the ambition and ill-directed abilities of the great Lord Bolingbroke in that of Anne.