Originally posted: 10th Feb 2016
An amazingly useful piece of paper
I was casually browsing the ‘treetops’ of my family tree when I came to Alice Grey (my 5G Grandmother).
Initially I’d known nothing more about Alice than that she married my 5th-great-grandfather Valentine Heighington in Stoke Newington, London in 1756.
However, thanks to an old piece of paper preserved and shown to me by my dad’s cousin, I learned that Alice was born in Lambourn near Wantage, Berkshire, and that her father was an attorney. Initial attempts to discover anything based on this had failed, and I’d left it at that.
A few days ago I searched again. This time I found a promising baptism for an Alice Grey, born in Lambourn and baptised in 1729. This gave her father as Isaac Grey and her mother as ‘Alice’. Searching on Isaac’s name revealed that just as the old family record had stated, there was indeed an attorney there with that name and at that time. The same set of parish records had a baptism for Isaac in 1696, revealing his father to be another Isaac, and his mother to be Sarah.
Finding evidence
At this point these connections were speculative, since I had no proof these were my people. Isaac’s profession as an attorney led me to think he might have been quite well off, so I searched in the database of wills of the prerogative court of Canterbury. Amazingly, wills existed for both Isaacs and also for Alice Grey, the mother of the Alice Grey I started with. The names of sons mentioned in the wills also corresponded with baptisms for the different sets. There are also records of Isaac the younger’s apprenticeship, as arranged by his father Isaac.
Alice senior’s will then named her daughter Alice as the wife of Valentine Heighington. This finally gave me definitive proof that this was my family.
A lucky find
I then did a Google search for “isaac grey” “lambourn” (even single words have to be in quotes to ensure they appear in the results). I got lucky. A detailed history of Lambourn church, including memorial inscriptions, had been published back in 1898 and digitised at archive.org.
Here I found the following inscription for the younger Isaac Grey, who died 1744 aged 48. I was able to cross-reference this death year with both the probate date of his will and his baptism.
On the east wall of St. Mary’s chapel:
In
Memory of
Isaac Grey, Gent.
who departed this life
Dec the 3rd 1744
Aged 48 Years
He has left a Widow
and four children
Inconsolable for his loss
having been a tender Husband
and the Most Indulgent Parent.
He was ever ready to Assist
The Needy, and to defend
the cause of the Poor
from Oppression and wrong.
He was the great Grand-son of Sr Nicholas Crisp
by his daughr Elizabeth, who lyes bury’d
in St. Mildred, Bread St, London.
2024 note: I subsequently explored the church via Google Streetview and was astounded that I could actually see the actual memorial stone.
Nicholas Crispe
One part of this inscription leapt out for me, as I expect it did for you:
- Who was Sr Nicholas Crisp, and why did the fact that Isaac was his great-grandson merit inclusion in the inscription?
Jumping back 3 generations from a starting point of 1696 was a challenge: there were several different Sir Nicholas Crisps/Crispes.
- If it hadn’t been for the very last line of the memorial inscription, I would have had no way of being sure which Sir Nicholas Crisp was the one referred to on the stone.
- But as it turned out, there was a famous Sir Nicholas Crispe who had a strong association with the church of St. Mildred, Bread St, London, and was indeed buried there in 1666, the year of the great fire of London.
A notorious figure
A few more things about Nicholas Crispe:
- He was a capitalist, one of the first to exploit African gold trade, and became extremely wealthy as a result of this
- He had an enormous mansion in Hammersmith built for himself
- He was an extreme royalist. He was so loyal to Charles I that he had a monument made to him.
- When he died, Crispe had his heart encased and placed at Charles’s feet and left money so his heart could be ‘refreshed’ with a glass of wine every year on the anniversary of his death.
- This was apparently done for 100 years!
- He was an MP for Winchelsea. He was then expelled and fled to France after Cromwell took control. He bankrolled the King while he was in exile, and came back to England after the restoration and was again an MP.
- His company was granted a monopoly on English trade with the whole of West Africa
- Although slaves were not mentioned in the patent of monopoly, they clearly played a significant role
This certainly gave me a few things to think about. You can read more historical details in the articles under Further Reading below.
Connecting Isaac Grey to Nicholas Crispe
While the memorial inscription had told me that Isaac’s grandmother was Sir Nicholas’s daughter Elizabeth. I didn’t yet know the path between Isaac and his supposed grandmother. I knew his father was another Isaac Grey, but annoyingly hadn’t been able to identify the last name of his mother, Sarah.
To try and validate and investigate, I first went to Nicholas’s will. This restated Sir Nicholas’s association with St Mildred, Bread Street, and confirmed a daughter called Elizabeth. However, at the time the will was written, Elizabeth was not yet married, so I had no last name to go on. Sir Nicholas died in February 1665 aged 66.
So I had to proceed by trying to link the following information:
- Elizabeth Crispe (daughter of Nicholas Crispe) b. abt 1620-40 married ______ and had a child
- UNKNOWN [son or daughter]
- Isaac Grey married Sarah around 1695 and had
- Isaac Grey born 1696 whose great grandfather was Sir Nicholas.
This meant that
- UNKNOWN child was either Isaac Grey (the elder) OR his wife Sarah XXXX
- So the person Elizabeth Crisp married was either the father of Isaac Grey the elder or the father of Sarah XXXX.
More luck
I searched unsuccessfully for an Elizabeth Crispe marriage. However, I did find a useful book online of the parish records of St. Mildred’s, Bread Street. No relevant ‘Elizabeth Crispe’ was mentioned, so I scanned through the pages looking for Elizabeths mentioned around the 1650s-1680s. I did this because I knew son Isaac’s father had to have been born by 1680 in order to have had his son Isaac in 1696.
One thing leapt out at me: In 1679 there was a record of the death of Elizabeth, wife of Isaack Gray. Yes, the spelling was slightly weird, but having just uncovered the other two Isaacs, the name certainly jumped out at me. It could be a coincidence, but perhaps it could be that simple: Nicholas’s daughter Elizabeth married Isaac Grey who had Isaac Grey who had Isaac Grey!
Feeling quite smug, I turned my attention back to wills in order to prove the link. These were wealthy people and all had wills proved at the prerogative court of Canterbury that are accessible online.
The key document was the will of Anne Crisp (née Prescott, the wife of Sir Nicholas). Anne’s will was dated 1669, and is very detailed about her offspring and other relatives.
But at first, my heart sank. There was only one mention of her daughter Elizabeth, and her last name given not as Grey, but with another name that I couldn’t read properly beginning with L. It didn’t mention her husband’s name or any children. I wasn’t happy about this, since for her many other children, all these details were given.
I sighed, sad that the Isaac Grey clue was potentially a red herring, but nevertheless pleased to have found her actual married name. After going through the name letter by letter I realised it had to be “Leicester”. Alas “Elizabeth Leicester” is quite a hard name to research, since there are a lot of Elizabeths in Leicester!
I also looked for ‘Leicester’ people at St Mildreds but found nothing.
Then it happened. I did a Google search for “elizabeth leicester” “crispe” and instantly knew I was onto something. From a book from 1897 called Collections relating to the family of Crispe (Volume 4), I found this text:
ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT indented, tripartite, made 25 June 1670, between (i) Isaac Gray of of London, citizen, (ii) Elizabeth Leicester of I.ondon, widow (relict and admix of Robert Leicester dec) and (iii) John Crispe of London, esq, and Richard Kinge of London, merchant, a marriage being intended to be had shortly after, between the said Isaac and Elizabeth.
Signatures of Elizabeth Leicester, John Crispe, and Ric : King on fold, (ii)
I knew via Anne’s will that Richard King was a brother-in-law and John Crispe was a brother of Elizabeth. So I had finally found the connection. I wasn’t able to find an actual marriage record. However, I did find a possible birth record for Isaac, son of the first Isaac, in Stepney, which is not far from St. Mildreds.
Several ancestors for the price of one
I had now landed in a ‘gentry’ situation. By this I mean that my ancestors were sufficiently famous/revered/rich that their lineage features in numerous publications. And these of course are now miraculously available to me to read in a few mouse clicks. This is great, even if I can’t be sure how accurate they are!
Sir Nicholas features in this tree towards the bottom on the left as Captaine Nicholas Crispe. There’s even an original church record for his marriage to my 9th-great-grandmother Anne Prescott.
Sir Nicholas’s father was Ellis Crispe, a wealthy businessman from Marshfield near Bath, Gloucestershire who became Alderman of London. His wife was Hester Crispe, of whom a rather amazing portrait exists:
And it goes on – Hester was the son of John Ireland (who left a will) and Anne Elizabeth Hill. This means I now know I have the name Hill on both sides of my family…
Recap
- My grandmother’s father was John Victor Charles Jones (b. 1874)
- John’s father was Charles Richard Jones (b. 1828)
- Charles’s father was Richard Jones (b. circa 1798), who married Ann Maria Heighington (b. 1798)
- Ann Maria Heighington’s father was Charles Francis Heighington (b circa 1760)
- Charles Francis’s parents were Valentine Heighington (b. circa 1724) and Alice Grey (b. circa 1728)
- Alice Grey’s parents were Isaac Grey (b. circa 1696) and Alice
- Isaac’s parents were Isaac Grey (b. circa 1672) and Sarah (Isaac later married a Martha)
- Isaac the elder’s parents were Isaac Grey and Elizabeth Leicester (nee Crispe)
- Elizabeth’s parents were Sir Nicholas Crispe and Anne Prescott, making Nicholas and Anne my 9th-great-grandparents.
While I’m not surprised, it was a bit of a shock discovering such a notorious slave trader in my direct line. But the fact that he is just one of 2,048 grandparents at this level, makes me a feel a bit better…
Further reading
Contact info: @dnapainter.bsky.social / jonny@dnapainter.com