Certain it is that in the reign of Edward the IIId there was a Thomas Colepeper resident at Preston Hall; but in the other parts of the sentence which I have cited Mr. Hasted did not attend to his notes of the family, made, as he says, from a large MS. pedigree he had of the several branches of it, from a visitation of the county of Kent in 1626, and from other MSS. in his possession. From these documents it is evident[1] that Thomas Colepeper of Preston Hall was the son of Walter Colepeper, who died in the last year of the reign of Edward the IInd, seized, as it is recorded in the inquisition taken after his death, of estates in Langley, Boughton, East and West Farleigh, Yalding, Mailing, Brenchley, and Shipborne. Joane was the christian name of the wife of Walter Colepeper, and by her he had three sons. Thomas, the eldest, was of Preston Hall, and he dying without issue, the estate passed to his next brother sir Jeffery, who lived at Preston Hall, and was sheriff of Kent in the 39th and 43d years of Edward the IIId, and he was the ancestor of the Colepepers, baronets, of Preston Hall. But Thomas Colepeper, son of John Colepeper, who married Elizabeth, heiress of sir John Hardreshull, succeeded his father in the manor of Bayhall in Pembury, and there kept his shrievalty in the 17th and 18th years of king Richard the IInd. Nor can I collect from any part of the pedigree, as detailed by Mr. Hasted, that there could have been resident in Preston Hall any male descendant from the Colepepers of Bayhall, who, as such, could have any pretension to the arms of Hardreshull. The claim, as I conceive, must have been founded on the marriage of Thomas Colepeper, who died in 1587, with Margaret Colepeper, daughter of Thomas Colepeper of Bedgbury in Goudherst, who was lineally descended from the Colepepers of Bayhall, and if so, their son Thomas Colepeper, who succeeded
- ↑ Hasted's Kent, V. II. p. 174.
