2. Sir Edwin Sandys - Marriages
Edwin Sandys married four times:
1st Wife - Margaret Eveleigh - Daughter of John Eveleigh from Devon, Edwin married sometime in the mid-1580s. They had one child - Elizabeth[1], born about 1585, she later married her own second cousin, Sir Thomas Wilford of Kent, who was executed as a royalist in 1648. Edwin's first wife, died in childbirth in July 1588; Edwin's father died the same month. Margaret's brother, Nicholas Eveleigh, who had been at Corpus Christi College with Richard Hooker and Edwin, became one of Sir Edwin's stewards.
2nd Wife - Anne Southcote - Daughter of Thomas Southcote/Southcott of Devon, a cousin of his first wife, he married sometime during the early 1590s and she died in 1593.
3rd Wife - Elizabeth Nevinson - Daughter of Thomas and Ann Nevinson, a well-established family from Eastry (near to Northbourne) - he married Elizabeth about 1601. The Nevinson family held the Canterbury Chapter manorial estate at Eastry from about 1550 to 1630. There are a number of Nevinson memorials in Eastry Church, including a large brass of Elizabeth's father, Thomas 'Nevynson' who died in July 1590. It seems they were only married for a few years before Elizabeth died. Hasted records they had a daughter - Anne - who married Thomas Engeham from the nearby parish of Goodnestone.[2]
4th Wife - Katherine Bulkeley[3] - born 1583, daughter of Sir Richard and Mary Bulkeley of Anglesey. She married Edwin in 1605 when he was approaching his mid-forties she was about 22; in the next two decades they had twelve children. Their youngest son, Francis was born when Edwin was well into his fifties and a miscarriage occurred in 1620 when Edwin was 58. Although there is an effigy of Lady Sandys in Northbourne church, the later plaque makes no mention of her; she outlived her husband by a number of years and died in 1640.
Effigies in Northbourne Church of Sir Edwin
Sandys and fourth wife Lady Katherine
Sir Edwin's and Lady Katherine Sandys Children:
(NB. The children below may not be in the correct order.)
1 - Henry (Eldest son b. 1605 - d. 1640) married Margaret daughter of Sir William Hammond of St. Albans, at nearby Nonington. The Northbourne parish register records: 'Captain Henry Sandys Esq. died at London', buried 7th August 1640. An earlier entry records: 'Edwin the son of Captain Henry Sandys, died in London', buried 19th June 1633.
2 - Edwin - 2nd son, Wadham College Oxford 1621. He married Catherine, daughter of Richard Champneys of Hall Place, Bexley, Kent. The Champneys were an ancient Norman family, Catherine's great grandfather - Sir John Champneys - was lord mayor of London in 1534 and began building Hall Place around 1537. Her grandfather - Justinian Champneys - was sheriff of Kent in 1582. Her father sold Hall Place and moved to Woolwich. Edwin was a Colonel in the Parliamentary army and wounded at the first significant engagement of the Civil War - the Battle of Powick Bridge, Worcester on 23rd September 1642, but died later in October and is buried at Worcester Cathedral. He was grandfather of Sir Richard Sandys, who was created a baronet in 1684, but died without issue in 1726.
3 - Mary - (b. 12 Sep 1607 - d. 26 Oct 1675). Around 1627 she married Richard Spencer of Orpington, second son of Robert Lord Spencer of Wormleighton, 1st baron (1570-1627). Mary's father-in-law became Lord Spencer in 1603 at the same time as Sir Edwin Sandys, when James VI was making his progress from Scotland to London to become James I of England. Lord Robert Spencer is an ancestor of Princess Diana (1961-1997). Mary died aged 69, leaving one daughter who was married to William Gee of Bishop Burlip, county York.
4 - Richard - of Downe Hall (b. 1608 - d. 1669) (married Hester Aucher). A colonel in the Parliamentary army. In 1647 he was governor of the Bermuda Company. Subsequently he purchased Down Hall, Kent. He was executor of his brother Henry and administrator of his father's estate when his mother died in 1640. \he is buried in St Mary's church, Downe, just as you enter the church and the inscription states:
Here lyeth the body of Richard Sandys, Esqre., 3rd son of Sir Edwin Sandys, in Norborough [Northbourne], in Kent, likewise the body of Hester Sandys his wife, daughter of Edwin Aucher, of Hilkborough, in the same County, gentleman. They had issue six sons and four daughters. Here also lyeth the body of Mary daughter of the above-named Richard and Hester Sandys, and relict of Mr. R. Sandford Vicar of Motham, who died October the first, 1733, in the 90th year of her age.[4]
5 - Catherine (married Gerard (or Robert according to Hasted) Scrimshire/Scrimshaw of Aquelate)
6 - Robert - who lost an arm fighting as a Royalist, fighting both Scots and Irish, he claims to have been in Charles's Privy Chamber. Charles II paid him £1,000 for his services, and eventually Robert settled in County Roscommon, on an estate named Sandifled, as the respectable son-in-law of an Irish Viscount.
7 - William - The Northbourne parish register records: 'William, son of Edwin Sandys Knight', buried July 21 1628.
8 - Elizabeth
9 - Thomas (d. after 1629)
10 - Penelope
11 - Francis - buried at Northbourne, 5th July 1620.
12 - Frances - youngest born between 1614 and 1619. The Northbourne parish register records: 'Frances the daughter of Sir Edwin Sandys, Knight,' buried 11th January 1630.
13 - Boy - stillborn on 10th September 1620.
[1] - National Biography, The Kent Visitation of 1619 and Theodore K. Rabb in Jacobean Gentleman, Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629 states her name was Elizabeth, although other sources recording the Wilford side of the family name her as Margaret. Did she later adopt her mother's christian name?
[2] - Edward Hasted records the marriage of Anne Sandys and Thomas Engeham in The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 1799 (1st edn) Vol IV, 146 note (b). However this detail was trimmed from his 2nd edition (1800). The Kent Visitation of 1619 has a Thomas Engham [sic] son of Edward and Elizabeth who was aged 21 at the time of the visitation.
[3] - The Kent Visitation of 1619 and National Biography records her as Catherine. However The Kent Visitation of 1663 uses Katherine. Professor Theodore K. Rabb, who has studied letters written by Edwin and his wife, records her as Katherine.
[4] - Thomas Myles Sandys, (1907), History of the Sandys Family. Published privately, 193.