Catalogue description Meade family of Drayton manuscripts

This is a generally straightforward, close-knit, collection relating to the estates built up by several generations of the Meade family in a single parish, Drayton, from 1650 onwards. Its particular merit lies in the fact that records of landed proprietors at this level rarely survive, but it suffers from the drawback that the records virtually all relate to matters of title, and personal details of the family are hard to come by. Only one will has survived in the collection, that of Francis, the last of the Meade line, who died in 1841 (ref.DD/PKS 38) and hence there are many gaps in the pedigree. The estates passed by Francis's will to his nephew Francis Meade Eastment, a minor, and were added to subsequently by the latter and the Trustees named in his uncle's will.

There is evidence elsewhere of a Francis Meade living in Drayton in 1608 (ref.DD/SAS C/1096/6), but the earliest acquisition by the family in this collection is the purchase by Thomas Meade of a forty-acre tenement of the Earl of Monmouth, which Thomas and his brother Philip, had presumably held as copyhold. There is other evidence in the collection(refs.DD/PKS 4-6) of the dismemberment of the manor by the Earl at this date.

The accompanying pedigree has been prepared without the benefit of the parish registers from the information available in the present collection; several relationships, thus, are only conjectural and these are indicated by dotted lines.

Meade family of Drayton, Somerset

C/2682

• Drayton, Somerset