Wyberg
Author: Nev. Ramsden
The Wyberg Family of Whitehaven
St.Bees Priory and the Dissolution
The common version is that given in Sandford's MSS., see the "Dean and Chapter Library, Carlisle”
………….. and thereupon builded this St. Bees Abbie, and give all those lands was snowen unto it, and the town and haven of Whitehaven; and sometimes after, all the tithes therabout, and up the montains and Inerdale for rest, eastward, was appropriated to this abbey of St. Bees; which was got by one Mr. Dacres, of kindred to the Lord Dacres; gott a long lease of it at fall of Abbies, and married one Mrs. Latos of the Beck hall, Millom; who afterwards married Squire Wybridge [Wybergh] of Clifton in Westmorland [**], who purchased the inheritance of this Abbie off the crowne, and sold it to old Sir John Lowther, who gave it to his yonger son, Sir Christopher Lowther, Kt. Bart. soon after.”
** Thomas WYBERGH, esq. of Clifton Hall, espoused in October, 1586, Anne, the Dowager Dacre of St. Bees, sister or niece of the celebrated Archbishop Grindall, and dying in 1623, left two sons, Thomas and Edmund.
…… on the dissolution, the revenues of this priory, according to Dugdale, were £431. 17s. 2d.; or,
by Speed's valuation, £491. 19s. 6d. From these statements it appears that there were only two religious houses in the county more amply endowed than the priory of St. Bees.”How lamentable a fact that from the revenues of this house, equalling about £3000. per annum of the modern value of money, the parish was sacrilegiously robbed not only of the endowments which had been appropriated for works of charity and education, but even of a suitable maintenance for its ministers, “to whom pertaineth the service of God,” and to such an extent, that, in 1705, the church was certified of only the annual value of £12.! Why was not a portion of its revenues appropriated to similar purposes as those foundations of later piety—the College and the Free Grammar School 2 Reformation would have been accomplished, and more efficiently, without sacrilege, had the voices of Latimer, and Cranmer, and other churchmen prevailed.
Edward VI. in the seventh year of his reign (1553) granted to Sir Thomas Chaloner, knight, the manor, rectory, and cell of St. Bees, with all its rights, members, and appurtenances, and all the possessions belonging to the same in St. Bees and Ennerdale, and elsewhere in the county of Cumberland (not granted away by the crown before); to hold to the said Thomas Chaloner, his heirs and assigns, in fee farm for ever, of the king, his heirs and successors, as of his manor of Sheriff-Hutton in Yorkshire, in free and common socage, by fealty only, and not in capite paying to the crown yearly the fee farm rent of £431.16s. 2d, payable to the crown.
Thomas Wybergh of Clifton in Westmorland purchased the Manor of St.Bees from Thomas Chaloner jnr. on the 30 November 1599. Later the Wyburgh family, who having been sufferers for their loyalty during the Great Rebellion, mortgaged St. Bees to the Lowther family; and on a suit instituted by Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven, the equity of redemption was foreclosed, and the estate decreed in chancery to him and his heirs, in the year 1663, in which family it has still remained, and now forms part of the possessions of the Earl of Lonsdale. In 1622, Bishop Bridgman, who then held the see of Chester, ordered the inhabitants of the five chapelries of Eskdale, Ennerdale, Wasdale Head, Nether-Wasdale, and Loweswater, to contribute to the repairs of this, the mother church. In 1705, the church of St. Bees was certified by James Lowther, Esq., of Whitehaven, the impropriator, at £12 per annum. The benefice is a perpetual curacy, in the impropriation and patronage of the Earl of Lonsdale. Etc Etc.
from Jefferson’s History of Cumberland 1842
Sir Thomas Chaloner (1521 – 14 October 1565) was an English statesman and poet.
Notes: Thomas Chaloner was born in 1521 to Margaret Myddleton and Roger Challoner (c. 1490–1550), a descendant of the Denbighshire Chaloners. His father was a London silk merchant who lived at St Mary-at-Hill Street, Billingsgate. A courtier, Roger was a Gentleman-Usher of the Privy Chamber to King Henry VIII, a Teller of the Receipt of the Exchequer, and a Freeman of the City of London through the Worshipful Company of Mercers. Roger died in 1550 and was buried in the main body of the Church of St Dunstan-in-the-East. Sir Thomas's two brothers, Francis and John Challoner settled in Ireland where John became a prominent politician and administrator.
No details are known of Thomas Chaloner's youth except that he was educated at both Oxford and Cambridge (likely St John's College). In 1540 he went, as secretary to Sir Henry Knyvett, to the court of Charles V, whom he accompanied in his expedition against Algiers in 1541, and was wrecked on the Barbary coast. In 1547 he joined in the expedition to Scotland, and was knighted, after the battle of Pinkie near Musselburgh, by the protector Somerset, whose patronage he enjoyed. In 1549 he was a witness against Edmund Bonner, bishop of London; in 1551 against Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester; in the spring of the latter year he was sent as a commissioner to Scotland to conclude the Treaty of Norham, and again in March 1552. In 1553 he went with Sir Nicholas Wotton and Sir William Pickering on an embassy to France, but was recalled by Queen Mary on her accession.
In spite of his Protestant views, Chaloner was still employed by the government, going to Scotland in 1555–1556, and providing carriages for troops in the war with France, 1557–1558. In 1558 he went as Elizabeth's ambassador to the Emperor Ferdinand at Cambrai, from July 1559 to February 1559/60 he was ambassador to Philip II of Spain at Brussels, and in 1561 he went in the same capacity to Spain. His letters are full of complaints of his treatment there, but it was not till 1564, when in failing health, that he was allowed to return home. He died at his house in Clerkenwell on 14 October 1565.
He acquired during his years of service three estates, Guisborough in Yorkshire, Steeple Claydon in Buckinghamshire, and, in 1553, St Bees in Cumberland. He married (1) Joan, widow of Sir Thomas Leigh; and (2) Audrey, daughter of Edward Frodsham, of Elton, Cheshire, by whom he had one son, Sir Thomas Chaloner (1559–1615). Chaloner was the intimate of most of the learned men of his day, and with Lord Burghley he had a lifelong friendship. Extracted from his Wiki on the WWW.
Synopsis
The Wybergh family, long established in North Westmorland, arrived in the district of St Bees, sometime in the 13th century. Gilbert de Engayne, the last of that ancient family in the direct line had a daughter Eleanor, who in 1364 carried the manor and demesne of Clifton near Penrith, in marriage to William de Wybergh, of St Bees. The aforementioned possessions remained the property of their descendants until the twentieth century. Eleanor Wybergh died in the reign of Henry IV of England, and the family laid her body to rest in Clifton Church, close to the old hall, where the residents placed a window in stained glass to her memory, bearing her effigy and arms. In 1524, Thomas Wybergh married a Lancaster of Melkinthorpe Hall. The family later suffered greatly in the English Civil War. In 1652, a Thomas Wybergh of St Bees, had his name attached to 'the list of delinquents', thus forfeiting the right to own his estates, which were later sold under the direct orders of Oliver Cromwell. The arms of Wybergh are, 'of three bars sable, and in chief three stoiles of the last'.
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Wybergh's transferred their allegiances from the Stuart's to the House of Hanover. During the Jacobite uprising of 1715, Thomas Wybergh, (1685-1735), was a prisoner of the Jacobites and exchanged for Alan Ayacough, who had supported the Pretender. His son, also called Thomas was later involved in the 1745 Uprising.
Following Thomas's death in 1753, the estates passed to his eldest son William, who died in 1757. He was succeeded by Thomas, the father of the person under discussion, who died in 1827. This Thomas married Isabella Hartley of Whitehaven in 1786, and after their son, also Thomas, assumed the Lawson inheritance the family settled at Isel, where they remained for many years.