Ernle
Other English place names deriving from the same two words are thought to include Earley, Berkshire and Areley Kings (otherwise Areley-on-Severn), formerly called Ernley, Worcestershire.
The parish of Earnley lies on the southern coast of England in the county of Sussex, 4 miles (6.4 km) south-west of Chichester, the local cathedral city.
Since the grant of lands was given to him by a family member, it appears logical to assume that his own connexion to the place, like theirs, dated to an earlier period.
These armigerous branches of the family, whose current fate is not always known, with their various differences or departures from the original paternal coat, taken as denoting cadency, were in alphabetical order: (From Burke's General Armory, 1884, p. 312, col. 2) 1.
* This filiation conflicts with what appears in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which points out the confusion of centuries of genealogists over the two Ernle brothers both, according to a common mediaeval usage unfamiliar to many modern researchers, named John.
He was the progenitor of the Wiltshire line, and thus the 17th-century chancellor's direct ancestor, while the younger of them, known to history chiefly as Sir John Ernley, was the Lord Chief Justice.
So, even if living in reduced circumstances, and performing manual labour, such English gentlefolk did not suffer from any deprivation, withdrawal, or removal of their hereditary gentle status.
On the other hand, while no one could deny their abiding gentle status, they might be subject to popular derision if they asserted it without the means of living up to it by the 'port (i.e. deportment), manner, or reputation' of a gentleman.
The descent hereafter is paralleled by the account of the family cited in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to be found under the heading, Sir John Ernley, Chief Justice.
One of the latest references to a member of this branch playing a prominent role in the affairs of the county dates from December 1624: Justices warrant to apoynte a Provost Marshall and to sett Watch & Ward December 1624 After our very harty comendacons : Whereas we have lately receaved Letters from the Lords of his Ma[jesty's] most hon[ourable] Privy Councell directed to us the Justices of Peace of this County; wherein theire Lo[rdships] require for the better secureinge of high wayes and the more safety of places wh.
[Chichester] & p'sently [i.e. presently] to take uppon you the said office And we have thought it fitt and convenient, that you should make choyse of vj (i.e. six) or viij (i.e. eight) of the substantiallest yeomen to be well armed to attend you at such tymes as yo° [i.e. you] doe apoynte to make your p'ambulacon [i.e. perambulation] W[ithin] that rape by such convenient division thereof as to yo'selves [i.e. yourselves] shall seeme best to app'hend [i.e. apprehend] all idle and loose persons and other dangereuse people or vagabonds that are to be suspected of any fellonyes or other disorders.
That they may be brought to the next Justice of Peace (if Cause require) or otherwise to be committed to the constable to be justified accordinge to the Lawe, And that you do continue this course iij [i.e. three] tymes in the weeke at the leaste and afterwards as you shall hand have further directions; and so not doubteinge of yor good care accordingly, we bid you heartely farewell.
In the early Tudor period, the original, or Sussex branch, of the Ernle family gave rise to Sir John Ernle (or Ernley), Knight, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas (1519–1520), whose career, begun during the reign of King Henry VII of England reached its height in the reign of his son and successor, King Henry VIII of England.
Sir John Ernley's legal and judicial career and family connexions are detailed in the DNB and its successor, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Sir John's descendants remained in Sussex through the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods maintaining their connexion with the manor of Earnley until its sale in 1630, during the first years of the reign of King Charles I.
As Chichester cathedral was the chief church of the diocese where their estates lay, and St Richard was a local saint whose Shrine was decorated by pilgrims and members of the local gentry for over 250 years during the pre-Reformation period, this task was partly a test of the Sussex Ernle family head's loyalty to the new religion, the Church of England, whereof, on earth, the king had declared his royal supremacy supplanting the authority of the pope.
William Ernle and Elizabeth his wife's tombs with their partially destroyed inscriptions are considered by historians to lie in West Wittering parish church, so the connexion, if true, was close.
Examination of their published pedigree reveals that, in fact, the two branches of the family, seated in Sussex and Wiltshire, existed simultaneously for over a century.
Christopher Whittick's DNB account of Sir John Ernley's career has this to say about the Ernle family's two-county history: The family had been lords of the manor of Earnley near Chichester since the 13th century [sic, properly since the 12th]...the acquisition by marriage of lands and a parliamentary seat in Wiltshire in the 1430s, and legal preferment in Sussex after the Yorkist victory in 1460... culminated, in terms of the early modern period, in the career of the Lord Chief Justice Ernle under the first two Tudor monarchs.
[translated from Latin to English as] The Rape of Cicestrie [i.e. Chichester] The Hundred of Manwode [i.e. Manwood, now Manhood] WILLIAM de ERNLE holds the fourth part of j.f.
in EARNLEY formerly held by John ERNLE, paying a subsidy [i.e. a tax] of 20 pence p. 164 Inquisicio capta apud Arundell die Lune proximo post festum Sancti Dunstani anno etc.
p. 247 A.D. 1428 [page heading] WILLELMUS ERNELEY tenet immediate de quo vel quibus ignorant, certa terras et tenementa in Yatesbury que nuper fuerunt Agnetis Burdon, per servicium un.
f. m. [rendered into English from Latin as follows] WILLIAM ERNELEY holds through subinfeudation, but from whom exactly is unknown, various lands in Yatesbury which were formerly held by Agnes Burdon, by the service of one f. m. Provided, of course, that these references do indeed relate to the same William ERNLE, this seems to indicate that while based at La Manwode in the parish of Earnley in Sussex in 1428, where, by being the first named, he would appear to have been the chiefmost resident (as holder of the manor of Earnley), he also held lands formerly in the possession of Agnes Burdon (widow of Nicholas, elsewhere recorded as Durdon, apparently erroneously) at Yatesbury in Wiltshire.
Indeed, after Dudley's execution in 1510, the younger John ERNLE appeared in the rolls of Parliament for 1513 as one of the 15 M.P.s for Sussex (among them a brace of Lewknors, two Fiennes, a Covert, all neighbours and kin), and, notably on the rise, as attorney to an approving master, the King, viz.
Most Ernle daughters made suitable marital alliances with members of other gentry families, but it can still be difficult to trace their posterity beyond the first or second generation.
It comes from an epitaph and extols the chief adornment that any lady of good family in times past could bring to her husband besides a dowry of money and land: physical beauty.
Another member of the Whetham line, Sir Michael Ernle (1599-?1645), Knight, uncle to the Chancellor, was a royalist commander during the English Civil War.
After he had spent some time at the University of Oxford, he betooke himself to a militarie life in the Low Countries, where he became so good a proficient that at his return into England at the beginning of the Civill warres, King Charles the First gave him the commission of a Colonell in his service, and shortly after he was made Governour of Shrewsbury, and he was, or intended to bee, Major Generall.
This anecdote serves to show the links not only between the Ernle family in Devon and Yorkshire, but also to demonstrate the shadow cast in both counties by the witchcraft hysteria then so prevalent.
Additionally, it was also used as the name for the barony granted to Rowland Edmund Prothero (1851–1937), who was created the 1st Baron Ernle, on 4 February 1919, for whose career and family history consult L.G.
