Person:John Barrett (15)

The Culpeper family settlement of 4 January, 1529/30 (Harl. Chart., 76H12, already cited) provided for the holding of Wigsell by trustees 'to the use of said Anne Colepepyr [widow of Walter[9] for life; remainder to said William Colepepyr and Cecele Barett, and the heirs of their bodies; in default to said William Colepepyr in tail, in default to the right heirs of said Sir Alexander Colepepyr [of Bedgebury].' This is testimony at once that on the date of the charter of 1530 the marriage had been arranged and was still to be consummated. . In the Culpeper pedigree returned at the Visitation of Kent, 1619, the bride is described only as 'Cecelia, filia... Barrett,' but the Barrett pedigree returned at the Visitation of Essex, 1612, which also certifies the marriage, identifies the bride's father. . The Barretts, descended from a companion of the Conqueror (see the Visitation of Essex, 1612, Harl. Pub., vol. xiii, 145), were long seated in Hawkhurst, co. Kent (Hasted, iii, 72), but in 1397 one of them married the heiress of the family of Belhouse in Essex and removed thither his residence (Morant, i, 78). His descendants were raised to the peerage by James I as barons Newburgh of Fife after an intermarriage with the Falkland Carys. . The John Barrett of Belhouse, whose daughter married William[10], but who died in 1526, before that marriage was celebrated, is described by Morant as 'applying himself to the study of the law, became eminent in that profession.' His contemporary, John Leland the antiquary, in his Encomia Illust. viror. (Works, 1774 ed., v, p. 107), vaunts his forensic eloquence in latin verse: 'Sic tua sollicitos facundia rara clientes Sublevet, et medio stet tua caussa foro.' . It would seem, therefore, that it must have been the tradition of this John Barrett, quite as much as the legal education of William Culpeper himself, which was the inspiration of the procession of the Wigsell Culpepers towards the Inns of Court. . Source of the preceding: Fairfax Harrison, "The Proprietors of the Northern Neck" . The following is from Jonathan Catton, Heritage & Museum Officer, Thurrock Museum (March 2000): .