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The Whitneys
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goode husband"; names all his grandchildren and, among them, Thomas, Robert and John Whitney, and Margery Aesden; speaks of fields at Bromhall, Chester, where his "daughter, Mary Whitnee, now liveth"; mentions a cottage, with the appurtenances, in the parish of Mel . . . . .1 (probably Melpas or Malpas) which he bought of his son-in-law deceased, Robert Whitney.a
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| A. D. 1558.
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The will of "Thomas Whytney, Clerk, sometyme Abbott to the late Monastery of Delaweres (?), in the County of Stafford, suppressyd"--signed 3 August 1558; proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, London, 13 August 1558--expresses the testator's wish to be buried in the monastery at Westminster, mentions his brother John Whitney, cousins Peter and Francis Whitney and Margery Aesden,2 niece Anne Whitney, and nephew Nicholas Whitney, to whom he devises his house in Mylne Street, Leek, Co. Stafford, and other property, real and personal. That this nephew, Nicholas Whitney, was the son of his brother John (and not of his other brother, Robert) appears from a suit brought, in the 27th year of Elizabeth (1584-5), by "Nicholas Whitney, of Brooke Walden, Co. Essex, alias dict. Nicholas Whitney, lately of Leke, Co. Stafford," against James Brodocke for a messuage, with its appurtenances, in Gryndon, Co. Stafford, "of which John, his father, died seized." See the Common Pleas or De Banco Rolls, in the Public Record Office.b
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| A. D. 1576.
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The will of Margery Aesden, "of ye parryshe Church of Draiton, in the County of Stafford, widdowe,"--signed 13 April 1576; proved at Lichfield 4 March 1578-expresses a wish to be buried in "ye church aforesaide"; gives to the poor people of Draiton a sum of money for the purchase of coals; devises unto "my kinswoman, Mary (Anne?) Whitney, daughter of my brother John Whitney, of Audlem, Chester," all her messuages and tenements, with their appurtenances, in Draiton, "now in the occupacon of Robert Wikins," and unto her cousin, Walter Whitney, of Nantwich, "all my lands and tenements whatsoever in the countie of Chester, left unto me by my grandfather Hugh Whitney, of Chester," as well as "the lands and tenements in Leeke, which I did purchase of my cousin,3 Nicholas Whitney"; gives to the latter, whom she styles "of Walden, in the County of Essex", "fiftene poundes of lawfull money of England"; leaves small legacies to her "cousin aforesayed Anne Whitney" (whom she appoints executrix) and to "Dorothie Meade, my mayde", and bequeaths the residue of her estate to William and Mary Aesden, "children of my late husband, as a token of my love for their dootiful kindness to me in my poore widdowhood."c
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1 The original manuscript is here illegible.
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2 She was undoubtedly his niece (daughter to his sister Margery, who married Peter Aesden) and appears to have died before 1576, as she is not mentioned in her mother's will,
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made in that year. The words cousin and nephew (or niece) were, at this time, used interchangeably.
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3 i. e., nephew.
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