On Thursday, November 8, 2001 at 5:04:18 PM UTC-7, . . . wrote:

In message . . .
. . . wrote:

. . . wrote:

I was told that there is a Meador Coat of arms which is said to have original at Wytnesham, Norfolk County, England in 1188.

I am not sure if there was Meador Coat of Arms.
What would like to know were is Wytnesham, Norfold County, England was

there

a Meador family living there in 1188 or there abouts.

A coat of arms for Meadows, or Medows, of Witnesham Hall and Great Bealings,
Suffolk, is listed in Burke's General Armory, which states that Earl Manvers
represents the younger branch of the family.

Complete Peerage (vol.8, p.394) gives the first Earl Manvers as Charles Pierrepont, previously Charles Pierrepont Medows (b.1737), great grandson of
"Sir Philip Medows, the diplomatist".

As a descendant (but not through the Manvers line) of this Philip
Meadows (the spelling in all our family documents) of Bentley, Suffolk,
I can report we have never heard of any ancient pedigree. The most I
have ever seen was in the ever-reliable Burke's Commoners of 1836 odd
and that only gives Philip's grandfather. (Somewhere I recollect an
entry in a Visitation record ... but I can't lay my hand on the
photocopy!)

I came on this web site:
http://members.aol.com/famhistbuf/meadows.htm

At the moment it is coming up blank, but Google's cache includes this:

From a document called SOME BURIALS OF PERSONS OF THE NAME OF MEADOWS BURIED
AT WITNESHAM:
"In the Nave: 'Sacred to the memory of Philip Meadows of Burghersh House, in
this parish, Esquire. The only surviving son of John Meadows of Botsdale, Esquire, by Frances, the youngest daughter of Humphery [sic] Brewster, of Wrentham Hall, in this county Esquire. He was in a direct lineal descendant of the elder branch of the very ancient family of Meadowe (once lords of the
manor and patrons of the church of Witnesham) and possessors of land in the parish as early as the year 1188 being the Great-great-grand son of William Meadows Esquire who was first seated here in 1630 and whose younger brother Daniel Meadows, Knight Marshall. The ancestor of the present noble family of Pierreponts, Earle Manvers. He departed this life Oct 16, 1824 in the 73rd year of his life.'

I don't think Daniel was ever knight marshal though Philip Meadows was,
in 1558 by Cromwell, as was his son, another Philip, around 1700 (DNB
for Sir Philip Meadows).

"Below the arms was inscribed: 'William Meadowe was seated at Witnesham in the year 1614. No evidence can be found that the Meadows' possessed lands in Witnesham as early as 1188.' "

From NORFOLK FAMILIES by Walter Rye : "Meadow of Yarmouth ... is said by Palmer's Perlustration (i., p. 163) to have been 'descended from a family in
Suffolk where, until a very recent date, they had a landed estate of which Peter de Medowe, living 1188, died seised.' Into the truth of this I need not go further than to point out that the name does not occur in any Suffolk
Visitation, nor except as "atte Medowe" in the Suffolk Fines.' "

[Extract from web site ends]

It sounds as though someone in the 17th century, as so often, was flattered with an embellished medieval descent.

Quite. Burke prefaces his article on them with "The ancient family of
Meadows has been settled in the enjoyment of lands at Witnesham in
Suffolk since the reign of Henry II".

I checked for Meadows arms in several medieval compendia without success (Foster's "Some Feudal Coats of Arms", Humphery Smith's "Anglo-Norman Armory
II", and the Society of Antiquaries' Medieval Ordinary vols 1 and 2).

Our family actually has two artefacts from the first Philip Meadows, one bearing his arms. I can look them up. Burke's Commoners has:
Sable a chevron ermine between three pelicans vulned, in a canton a
lion sejeant, and in chief a label of three points.
--
. . .
For a patchwork of bygones: . . .

You all might be interested to look up this ID, GZQ5-7BY, on FamilySearch.org/tree and follow the patriarchal ancestry as far as it goes. I'm not sure how accurate it is, nor how relevant it is to this discussion, but it has people with the surname of De
Medewe, De Medew, and such (some of them earls) descended (in a patriarchal fashion) from Earl De Wytnesham in 1025 (and it has some of the aforementioned descendants being 'of Wytnesham'). Some people with the surname Dewey are descended from this line (
rather than from the Welsh name for David).

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a Meador family living there in 1188 or there abouts.

Interestingly, Peter De Medew (one of the aforementioned descendants) has the following birth information:
Abt 1188 Of, Wytnesham, Suffolk, England.

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On Sunday, July 3, 2022 at 11:02:36 PM UTC-7, Sam wrote:

I'm not sure how accurate it is, nor how relevant it is to this discussion, but it has people with the surname of De Medewe, De Medew, and such (some of them earls) descended (in a patriarchal fashion) from Earl De Wytnesham in 1025 (and it has some of

the aforementioned descendants being 'of Wytnesham').

Someone has let their enthusiasm get the better of them. There was no such title as Earl de Wytnesham, not in 1025 nor any other time. In 1025, the only earls ruled very large areas (e.g. Northumbria, Wessex), not individual villages. It was only many
centuries later when 'Earl' as a title became divorced from the traditional shires and was just a social rank that could be attached to any geographical designator. Furthermore, the nature of the available records makes it very hard to to trace any
English landholding family before 1089, and almost none to 1025. In most cases, later bearers of toponymic surnames can't be traced before the 12th or even 13th century, and anything one finds tracing further back without clear evidence must be taken
with a huge grain of salt, because it is almost always completely made up.

taf

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