Excerpt from Genealogy of the Family of Gresham This Work has occupied twelve years, and is at last completed. It is the history of a family which, like many others, takes its name from the place of its origin, rises into importance with the progress of mercantile adventure in Henry VIII.'s reign, fills important civic offices, takes rank among the principal gentry of the county as Sheriff or in Parliament, suffers heavily in the Civil Wars, is rewarded with a Baronetcy at the Bestoration, becomes in due time extinct [as I believe the Gresham Family to be absolutely in the male line], and transmits its line and property through females. It was difficult to identify the persons intended in the Introduction to the Pedigree printed in Ward's 'Lives of the Gresham Professors, ' although I have succeeded to a great extent; and there are a few blanks in the one compiled by me which I had hoped to fill up, but which, notwithstanding the most thorough investigation on my part, and the kind assistance of others, I have not succeeded in doing; some of these will, doubtless, be made good as time goes on. I have had the advantage of a very large collection of deeds in my possession to refer to, from which most of the autographs and seals are taken; but, on the other hand, of monuments, family pictures, or correspondence, there are next to none. It is a remarkable fact that whereas in the Registers of Limpsfield [where for one hundred and fifty years the Greshams were the principal local residents] there are about forty burial entries, and in the Registers of Titsey twenty-three; there is in the former church only one monument - that to Martha, the wife of Sir Edward Gresham, Bart., 1712 - and in the latter only two. None, I believe, have been destroyed, as the County Historians, from Aubrey downwards, only mention the above. In an interleaved copy of Ward's ' Lives of the Gresham Professors, ' in the British Museum, that writer says that in the old church at Titsey there were, besides the two monuments, two hatchments - one for Sir Marmaduke Gresham, Bart., with the arms of Gresham impaling Corbet; the other for his son Sir Edward, with his arms impaling Maynard. There are, as far as I know, only eight monuments now existing in England to members of the family bearing the name: viz., two at Titsey, one at Limpsfield, one at Haslemere, one at Thorpe Market, one at Walsingham, one at Fulham, and one in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate Street. The family portraits at Titsey doubtless disappeared when the house was pulled down, cir. 1770; of the Titsey line there remains but one, that of William Gresham, painted by Cornelius Ketel in the year of his death. It is a half-length on panel, representing a man standing, looking to the left, in a black silk dress with ruff, and velvet cap, the sleeves slashed with velvet and tufted, the hands folded in front. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.