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Of England.
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xiii
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As a matter of course, the name Whitney occurs in the lists of gentlemen in the commission of the peace for Herefordshire; as, temp. Elizabeth, Eustace Whitney; about 1673, Thomas Whitney, of Whitney;1 in 1799, James Whitney, of Norton Canon, related to the family of Whitney-court.2
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The Sir Robert Whitney, Knt., of King James's and of Charles's reign, had four sons who all died without issue, and four daughters to whom the estate descended. They all married, and enjoyed shares in the property. Robert Rodd, the only son and heir to Thomas Rodd, married Hannah Whitney, one of the four daughters, and conveyed her share to Robert Price, of Foxley, by whom it was sold to William Wardour. The latter acquired the rest of the estate, and built the present Whitney-court, and also, in 1740, Whitney church, to replace the one swept away, ten years before, by a flood of the Wye--a calamity which involved the destruction of all the old family monuments but one, that to the memory of Williams, of Cabalva, in the neighborhood, who married into the Whitney family. Mrs. Bourne held the property from William Wardour, and left it to her godson, the grandfather of the present owner, Tomkyns Drew, Esq., and of his brother, the Rev. Henry Drew, rector of the parish.
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The present representative of the Herefordshire Whitneys is Thomas Whitney, Esq., of Bath.3
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The Whitneys were also established at a very early day in Cheshire, and had a seat at Coole Pilate, a township in the wide-spread parish of Acton, near Nantwich, almost as soon as those of Herefordshire were settled upon the Welsh border. "The manor" of Coole Pilate, say the Lysons,4 writing in 1810, "which was anciently parcel of the barony of Wich-Malbank, is now the property of Lord Kilmorey: in this township were two halls, with considerable estates annexed, one of which belonged to the Whitneys, who became possessed of it in the reign of Richard II (1377-99) and had a seat there for many generations: this estate was purchased in 1744 of Mr. Hugh Whitney, by whose death the family is supposed to have become extinct. The
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Whitneys
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Cheshire.
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1 Probably to the same family is to be assigned John Whitney, the author of a very rare book, Genteel Recreation, or the Pleasure of Angling, a Poem, with a Dialogue between Piscator and Corydon, 12mo, 1700. There was a Rev. George Whitney, instituted in 1807 to the rectory of Stretford, Herefordshire, who died in 1836. (See Gent. Mag., 1836, p. 438). I have read somewhere, says Mr. Green, that a Captain Whitney, was a companion of Sir Walter Raleigh, and of the name a lieutenant fought at Worcester on the royalists' side. If Whitney, the highwayman, was a member of the family, it would be but an outbreak of the old spirit of the border chieftains. His exploits are narrated in "The Jacobite robber. Account of the famous life and memorable actions of Captain J. Whitney, London, 1639.
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2 Duncumb, Vol. I, pp. 102, 113, 114, 116, 119.
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3 Strong's Heraldry of Herefordshire, p. 109. This book was published in 1848; and the statement may not be true at present.
The only Whitney mentioned in Walford's County Families, edition of 1876, is Thomas Annesley Whitney, of Merton, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, Ireland, who is without male issue.
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4 Magna Brit., Vol. II, Cheshire, p. 473.
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