Egles' Geneology page!




Here I am while posing for a statue in
the land of my forefathers and foremothers.

[IMAGE]
[IMAGE]
This is the memorial marker of my multi - great grandfather
Gabriel. Engraved above the family crest are the words:
Here lyeth the body of Gabriel Egles esquire
who departed this life the 7th day of August 1707
and in the sixty fifth year of his age.

The Egles Family of East Sussex

The history of this family has been traced no further back than Andrew Egles who died in 1563 leaving at least three children all aged under 21 and who was possibly born in the 1530s. The family appears to have originated from outside Sussex, possibly from Kent, as the name does not appear in the 1524/5 Subsidy. However, from as early as the first generation, the family had pretentions to gentry status although it is not until 1707 that they appear to have used a coat of arms. On the memorial to Gabriel Egles in Uckfield Church [he died in 1707] we find, sable, six lions rampant, argent, 3,2,1, and although the present Garter Principal King of Arms, Mr Cohn Cole, can find no evidence of a grant or record of this family having proved their right to arms, the arms themselves may point to some earlier member of the family, or at least a family who did use identical arms. It should be noted that Wadhurst, where the earliest Sussex Egles resided, was a manor held by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the whole parish was in his peculiar jurisdiction. Likewise in Kent, the manor of Detling also belonged to the Archbishop. William de Detling, brother of Bishop Gundulf of Rochester is recorded as holding 1/2 a knight's fee at Detling in 1093/6. His presumed descendant Sir William de Detling held the same fee in 1171, and the same man, or possibly his son, was still there in 1210/12. A little later in 1253/4, William de Detling is known to have been holding Detling freely of the Archbishop and in 1279 a rent of l3 pounds per annum is recorded for the holding. Sir William de Detlyng is known from the St George, Dering and Camden Rolls of Arms to have been living in the third quarter of the 13th century and to have borne the identical arms to those of the Sussex Egles families. Similarly, in the Heralds Visitation of Cheshire in 1580, Sir William's arms appear, and in the Visitation of Kent in 1574, they appear as a quartering of the Sondes family through the marriage of Bennett, daughter and heir of Sir John Detling who married Thomas Towne and had a son Thomas whose daughter Elizabeth married William Sondes. The early heralds had obvious difficulty in recording the Detling surname. It appears variously as Detlyng, d'Ecligges, de l'Eglise, Englis, Engleys and Englys. If the original family name was d'Ecclesia - recording the church connection with the brother of Bishop Gundulf - it soon became confused with the feudal holding at Detling. What is interesting however, is that at Wadhurst about 1285, we find a John de Ecclesia holding land from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Although any connection between the Kent and Sussex families is pure speculation, there seems to have been sufficient reason why in the early 18th century the Egles of Wadhurst suddenly adopted the arms of the Detlings, without proving their right to do so with the College of Arms. If there was no genetic connection between the families, one wonders how Gabriel Egles came to acquire his arms without reference to records at the College where the only early notices of the arms are recorded. Until further evidence is found the connection remains unproven but highly possible. The connected pedigree however, begins as mentioned, with the family of Andrew and is given below in the form usual for this magazine. We are grateful to Mr John McKee for supplying much of the information used in compiling this article, and to Mr F Leeson for supplying some missing marriages. Other sources used are mentioned in the text or at the end of the pedigree.

Excerpt from "The Sussex Genealogist" Vol 3, No. 2

Gramps apparently didn't leave me any money but the good town folk of Uckfield, Sussex, England
saw fit to name a street in his honor

[IMAGE]
Egles Grove
BACK TO HOME
Last edited on February 19, 2001