Person:Jemes Honnyng (1)

Baptised at Eye on 26th July 1562. Pictured a smartly dressed young man in a large ruff, white body-coat, slashed sleeves, red cloak, his left hand resting on his sword; bearing on the left shoulder the badge of a black bull collared, showing he was a retainer of some family of rank, “probably the WINGFIELDS, into which his eldest brother had married” according to Davy, but more likely the WRIOTHESLEY family.

As servant of Henry WRIOTHESLEY, the third Earl of SOUTHAMPTON, Jemes travelled to Ireland in 1599. SOUTHAMPTON had volunteered to fight under ESSEX, in his expeditions to Cadiz in 1596, and to the Azores the following year. In 1599 ESSEX was sent by the ageing Queen Elizabeth to Ireland, to defeat Hugh O’NEILL, the rebel Irish Earl of TYRONE, once and for all.

Jemes was appointed Surveyor of Woods in Suffolk and Norfolk in 1605, at the age of 43.

1.   Barry, T. The Life and Family History of William Honnyng. (London, England: ISBN-13 978 0 9532685 3 5, 2008).