Thrale history

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A New Thraliana (1973)

Monastery of St. Albans the abbot had granted a forty year lease of Sandridgebury, and of Napsbury to Robert Thrale the younger. When Sir Ralph Rowlatt inherited the properties in 1542, he was not able to find the abbot's part of the lease and therefore did not know what covenants Robert Thrale the younger had entered into regarding the farm, nor for certain the length of the lease. Sir Ralph asked the executor of Robert Thrale's will, the Reverend Henry Kyrke, to produce therefore their part of the lease. Then in a further action Sir Ralph claimed that the Reverend Kyrke as executor, and trustee of Sandridgebury Farm until Robert's sons Thomas and Alban had reached the age of 21, had granted all his interests in the property to him. But Alice Fitz, the widow of Robert Thrale the elder, had entered Sandridgebury without any right and would not give it up. Alice in her turn replied that Robert Thrale the younger's widow Jane had died shortly after him, and that the Reverend Kyrke assigned the property to her, Alice, in trust for her grand-children. How the matter turned out is not really known, but the Thrales continued to live at Sandridgebury for a further four generations.

The fate of Napsbury as far as the Thrale holding is concerned is also not really known. The manor is just south outside St. Albans not far from the old Sopwell Priory, near Old and New Parksbury. Apparently just before the Dissolution the abbot leased Napsbury to William Marston for 90 years. If the rent was in arrears, the abbot was to be allowed to enter the manor within one month. After the Dissolution the King granted it in 1540 to Ralph Rowlatt.⁴ Robert Thrale must therefore have held Napsbury some time between the tenure of Marston and Rowlatt, perhaps when Marston was unable to pay his rent.

The vagueness about the Thrale leases is curious, but when one notes the relationship of various Abbots to the Thrales, some surmises could perhaps be made. When Abbot John Moote was succeeded by John Heyworth in 1401 which was the time when the Clock Tower was being built in St. Albans, there would appear to be a start of some sort of relationship. John Heyworth was followed by John Bostock, or John of Wheathampstead, as he was quite often called. He was the son of Hugh Bostock of Chester but his mother Margaret had inheirited Mackerey End from Thomas Mackerey her father - Mackerey End famous later through Lamb's Essays and yet another farm held by the Thrales. A nephew of John of Wheathampstead, John Willey, alias Heyworth, had married Elizabeth Thrale and lived at Mackerey End like his father and son. He

Footnotes

4. V.C.H of Hertfordshire.↩︎