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The North Chapel was probably connected with Sewards Manor and the Finch family. It contains a tablet to the last of the Finches (Catherine), who married Sir Dru Drury, and tablets to James Hugessen, who bought the Finch-Drury estates, and many of his descendants.
Kentish Names & Arms (Cecil Humphery-Smith)
More than one hundred Hugessens are recorded and the coat of arms, obviously canting on the Hogs, appears liberally wrought on monuments, hatchments and in brass and glass, from the early seventeenth century to our own times. It is believed that the Hugessens name was to be found in ‘Linstead’ at least three centuries earlier, but there have been foreign connections in the family which have led to some to speculate a Dutch or German origin for the Kentish family. Elvin’s Records of Walmer, p. 70 – a rarish work now - gives the Hugessen pedigree in some detail.
The principal male line came to an end with William Weston Hugessen of Provender, one of whose co-heiresses was his daughter, Mary, mother of Sir Edward Knatchbull, ninth baronet, who died aged 67 on the 24th May, 1849. He married firstly, Annabella Christina, daughter of Sir John Honeywood, Bart., of Evington, and by her had five sons and one daughter. She died suddenly at Provender in her 29th year, on Monday 4th April, 1814. Sir Edward then married Fanny Catherine, daughter of Edward Knight (brother of Jane Austen), of Godmersham Park, and by her had a further family of five sons and four daughters. The children of the second marriage took the surname Hugessen in addition to that of Knatchbull at their father’s request in memory of his mother, Mary. One of these sons, Edward, entered Parliament as his father had and, after a successful career in foreign and colonial politics as a Liberal, became Lord of the Treasury and subsequently Under-Secretary for Home Affairs and a privy Councillor. Edward was raised to the peerage as first Baron Brabourne in 1880, whereupon he changed his vote to Conservative.
Lord Brabourne made quite a reputation for himself publishing stories for children and perhaps this gift was stimulated by his Hugessen ancestry. They were certainly adventurers. Indeed James Hugessen, who died in 1646, was a member of the Merchant Adventurers Company and traded between Dover, Sandwich, London and France, the Netherlands and the New World. During the Spanish wars Hugh Hugessen fought as a freebooter captain in Holland and was granted, as “Huge Hugessine” by the Duke of Verdomme the splendid armorial bearings: Argent, on a mount vert in base an oak tree proper between two boars combatant sable armed and tusked or. The English Kings of Arms, of course, were only prepared to recognise a foreign grant to a subject of our Sovereign with a new grant and in 1624 Sir William Segar confirmed the arms to the descendants of Hugh, the Hugessen family of Norton and to James Hugessen of Linstead and Dover he granted Or, on a mount an oak tree proper between two boars combatant azure.
Yet, when the Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway in 1667 it was Major Hugessen – probably Sir William Hugessen of Provender in Norton, formerly of Sewards in Linstead, a lineal ancestor of Lord Brabourne – with a company of the trained bands who helped in the successful defence of the fort at Sheerness. Even in the seventeenth century the Hugessens lived to great age. James of Dover was more than 80 when he died in 1637 and the Major is said to have been an old man when he repulsed the Dutch. None was named as a royalist, which may account for survival through the troubled times!
James Hugessen was a generous man in his failing years. When the Church of St. Martin-le-Grand was closed soon after the Reformation the large churchyard, part of which had for long been used as an open market place, was taken over by the Corporation of Dover. Some eighty years later the King’s representative obtained possession which the Corporation contested. They were unable to establish a clear title, but hesitated to surrender to the Crown because, in the meantime, their Almshouse had been built on one corner, their Court House in the centre and their Market Hall on the north side of the Market Place. While the dispute went on, James purchased the Crown’s interests and by a splendid piece of legal conjuring obtained total freehold of the land and all that was built upon it including the Corporation’s buildings. Then by a deed of gift, he restored to the Mayor, Jurats and Commonality of the Cinque Port and Town of Dover the Almshouse, Court House and Market Hall. The several legal instruments remain to this day in the muniment cabinet. It is sad to reflect that two pre-Reformation churches – St Martin’s and St. Peter’s – perished in the interests of these commercial transactions.
James’s son, another James, became High Sheriff of the County of Kent. He died in 1646 and his monument in Linstead church shows the winged oak–tree crest above the arms.
HUGESSEN, Hugesson or Hugeson, is a simple patronymic type of surname signifying ‘son of Hugin, Hugen or Hugun,’ all these being diminutives of the personal name Hugh – derived through Old French from Old German Hugo, a short form of members of a whole group names having the Old German hugu meaning ‘heart, mind’ as their first element. It is likely, therefore, that while in Kent one particular family of the name has become famous and has many collateral branches surviving within the county, there are many unrelated descendants of unrelated Franks, Norse and Saxons named Hugh.
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