Archive:The Social Circulation of the Past

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The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture 1500-1730, by Daniel R. Woolf (Oxford University Press, 2003)

...Joan Thynne, a widowed Wiltshire gentlewoman, was proud to announce in 1607 the betrothal of her daughter to one Mr Whitney, 'a gentleman of a very ancient and worshipful house', adding in a postscript that Whitney's great-grandfather [sic--It was his great-great-great-grandfather.--RLW] had been married to the daughter of Lord Audley, and that 'I credibly understand, that all the lands whereof Mr Whitney is now seised...was Whitney's lands before the conquest of England'. Thuough the suitor was 'but an esquire, yet there were eighteen knights of his name before the Conquest which were lords and owners of the same lands which are now his'.

The following document contains additional information:

Thynne, Dorothy, dau. of Sir J. Thynne, jun. Proposal for her marriage with Robert Whitney, 1605. LIV. f.69. (Thynne Family Papers, Longleat House)