Genealogy of the Grandison family

MSS/0405

Genealogy of the Grandison family

1621-1626

Item

ff. viii + 99.
Quarto.
Half leather binding, brown, with brown pasteboard; a red oval painted on the front and back covers. Engraved bookplate by Hogarth (see also MSS/0396, MSS/0397) of John Holland, herald painter, fol. iii; inscription 'John Holland N^o.79', fol. ii.

Genealogical history of the families of Grandison, Tregoze and St John, with transcripts of deeds and other documents relating to these families, and numerous coats of arms in colour; 1621-6 (for the date see fol. viii). The volume was apparently compiled to commemorate the elevation of Oliver St John of Lydiard Tregose to the peerage of Ireland as Viscount Grandison of Limerick (letters patent, 3 Jan. 1620/1). The arms which form the frontispiece, fol. 2v, show several heraldic improprieties (in the omission of some main paternal lines). The volume consists mainly of pedigrees showing the descent of Oliver St John from the extinct family of the Grandisons and their connections with other noble lines. See the notes by Frank Theodore Smallwood, FSA, fols. v-viii. Armed or robed figures, with banners or shields, precede sections showing connections with the Beauchamp family, fols. 65v-90. Rough coloured drawings, added later, of figures of a baron, a bishop, and two abbots, in parliamentary robes, fols. 94v-6v. Four lines of verse, entered c. 1700, refer to the Tregoze family and Lydiard temp. William the Conqueror, fol. 99v.

SAL/MS/405

Possibly incorporated from the papers of the Rev. John Brand (see MSS/0397).