By Haydn Brown.
The Jermy’s of Stanfield Hall were an ancient family who arrived in England from Normandy soon after William the Conqueror – sometime around 1100. They were of the knighted class, holding their estates from various Earls and Barons by ‘knight’s fees’ – mostly in East Anglia. By the 1500s, however, they had acquired freehold ownership of their own properties. One branch of the family settled in North Norfolk and a later son of this line, John Jermy, Esq, became a successful lawyer in London before returning to Norfolk to take up the position of chief counsellor to the Bishop of Norwich – sometime around 1600. He did well in this post and was soon in a position to purchase two estates in north Norfolk for his sons. The elder son, Francis, settled at Gunton Hall, near Aylsham, while the younger one, Robert, did so at Bayfield Hall, near Holt. Each Jermy is outlined in turn:
The Senior Jermy Line at Gunton Hall:
This line of the Jermy family continued at Gunton for several generations, until about 1700 – when the Estate had to be sold to cover mortgage debts accrued years before during the English Civil War. By the late 1680s, the elder son, Francis, did at least attend Cambridge although he did not go on to a career in either the law or the church. After the estate was sold, he settled for a time in Hainford, near Norwich, where he married and had two surviving daughters before abandoning them and their mother for London where he seems to have lived ‘on his wits’. He then had three sons there in an irregular 2nd marriage but no later Jermys descended from them.
Francis Jermy did have a younger brother back at Gunton Hall but he received even less from the estate and very little education which meant the he had to settle for a working class apprenticeship – in Great Yarmouth. He did, however, later obtain a slightly better position in the Custom’s Service there through the influence of earlier family contacts. This younger brother of Francis was thereby in a position to afford to give his eldest, of two sons, at least, training as a Shipwright, but that son died quite young, without leaving an heir. The younger of the two sons obtained neither education nor training and was later referred to as ‘an illiterate day-labourer’. His name was John Jermy, the same John Jermy who was allegedly bought off for a mere £20 by Isaac Preston, the lawyer to William Jermy. It is not known if this John Jermy ever married or had children but he died in 1768 in Yarmouth. John’s death brought to an end the Gunton Hall branch of the ancient Jermy family.
The Junior Jermy line at Bayfield:
The junor line continued at Bayfield a little longer – until about 1750 that is. By 1735, the senior survivor on the estate, after 5 generations, was a respected Norfolk lawyer and landowner whose only son, William Jermy, Esq, was ready to marry that year. A union was arranged with the Hon. Elizabeth Richardson, only daughter of a wealthy landowner of south and west Norfolk – not the Jermys’ usual area of influence – She was soon to be the heir to her family’s large estate, including Stanfield Hall. In those times, a husband became effective owner of his wife’s property and, as William’s father had recently died, he was now in control of both Bayfield Hall and Stanfield Hall Estates. Unlike his father, however, he wasn’t very good at husbanding his resources and spent most of his time enjoying the lively social, partying scene amongst the landed gentry of Norfolk and in London. They never resided at either Hall but at their homes in Norwich and Aylsham, which were more convenient for their active social life. But he and his wife quarrelled and were soon divorced, she then dying before 1750. They had no children.
William Jermy was now free to marry again and would of course be quite a catch with all his wealth. But he too was now quite ill and apparently not very capable of handling his own affairs. It was at this point that a shrewd local lawyer – an Isaac Preston ‘befriended’ him on the basis of having worked with William’s father previously. He soon convinced William to marry his sister Frances Preston – in 1751. Conveniently for Isaac Preston, William Jermy died very soon afterwards and, having never co-habited with Frances, there were no children. As William was the last of his family, and with no close relatives, his Estate passed into the hands of the Prestons; but what would happen as a consequence of this and who would legally end up with William’s vast Estate following the wording of his Will? Needless to say, the Will had been drawn up by this earlier Isaac Preston, the clever lawyer who advised for the property to go to William’s new widow, Frances, for her lifetime and then to one or other of two named Preston relatives, and their sons, if any. But these two men both died before Frances’s death in 1791 and without issue. In that case, said the Will, the property should go
“to the male person with the name Jermy nearest related to me (ie to William) in blood, and to his heirs forever”.
The ‘property’ by the time Frances died was, however, now lacking Bayfield Hall estate as the Will had also stated that Frances was to receive £5000 from the entire estate during her lifetime. This was much too much to raise from annual rental income so it was decided by Frances’s brother Isaac Preston to sell Bayfield! This was almost criminal by destroying the capital value of the estate; this certainly smacked of Isaac Preston’s influence in composing William’s Will. Bayfield Hall was sold in 1765 to the Jodrell family for £7600.
Some years later, in 1817, a Norwich weaver named Jonathan Jermy made a claim for the Bayfield estate through the courts based upon a pedigree that appeared to indicate he was a descendent of the Bayfield Jermys and thus William Jermy’s nearest heir-at-law. His apparent Jermy forebears over the 4 previous generations did have the very same christian names as did William’s, and in the same order, but his claim was made just after the relevant Statute of Limitations had expired and his pedigree was thus never examined in court. This was however later pursued and it was discovered that way back in 1640, Jonathan Jermy’s family’s name had actually been Jermyn, an unrelated family, but altered to Jermy after the civil war by church Vicars who were more familiar with the name Jermy. This family had actually settled near Stanfield Hall which turned out to be simply a remarkable coincidence!
A later member of the Jodrell family left Bayfield to the youngest son of the Earl of Leicester, Roger Coke; in more recent times the Hall came to the distantly related Combe family, of which Roger and Caroline Combe have resided there in recent years:
At least Stanfield Hall was still intact back in 1791 when William Jermy died. But who was ‘the nearest blood relative’ of William Jermy – with the surname Jermy at that point in time? There were no Jermys left in the Bayfield Hall line. What about the Gunton Hall Jermy family who previously had dispersed to London and Great Yarmouth? By 1791, none of the London members of that branch were still alive and in Yarmouth, the last of that family, a John Jermy the day-labourer described above, he had also died in 1768 and seemingly without issue.
What would happen now? Well, a short time after Frances died, another member of the Preston family, also a lawyer but not mentioned in the Will, quietly walked into possession of Stanfield Hall and instructed the estate’s Steward to forward the considerable rental income in future to him in Kings Lynn, claiming that he was now the new owner – “being the nearest relative to Frances”. In support of his claim he produced some apparently forged documents. The possibility of such an occurrence had been foreseen by the earlier Isaac Preston, namely that any future rights to William Jermy’s Estate could be claimed by anyone else . Frances death in 1791 was over 40 years since William’s death and his Will was published. Who else in 1791 would have any knowledge or interest in such a Will? No one apparently. There wasn’t it seemed ‘anyone else’ – to even question the suspicious justification produced by the member of the Preston family who walked into Stanfield Hall and staked his claim. No one else, seemingly, came forward to complain which meant that Stanfield Hall was to remain with the Prestons.
A contemporary account of the Jermy family and a murder that occurred in the 19th century can be read HERE; plus further accounts at many other websites – such as the following:
https://norfolktalesmyths.com/2017/11/03/the-stanfield-hall-murders-revisited/
https://norfolktalesmyths.com/2017/11/10/the-stanfield-tragedy-trial-execution/
THE END
Sources:
http://www.jermy.org/index.html
www.jermy.org/baynebk.html
https://www.jermy.org/valdar.html
https://www.jermy.org/StewartValdar.html
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