Middlemore Family Genealogy

Thicknesse. -This was a very ancient Staffordshire family which had, it is said, been settled at Balterley since.the time of Henry II. It will be remembered that George Middlemore (20), the uncle of Robert, married Mary, widow of Thomas Thicknesse, of Whittington, whose son Ralph was a barber surgeon in London. Some accounts of the Thicknesse family state that Ralph Thicknesse of Balterley, who died in 1640, the brother of Frances Thicknesse, married Margaret, or Katherine, daughter of Randal Middlemore, of Stanton, but this is obviously incorrect. The kinship of Thomas Thicknesse, of Whittington, and Ralph Thicknesse, of Balterley, has not been ascertained. The Thicknesses are now represented in the female line by Mr. Ralph Thicknesse, eldest son of the Right Rev. Dr. F. H. Thicknesse, the present Bishop Suffragan of Leicester, who married the heiress of this ancient family. The arms of Thicknesse are, Argent a fess sable fretty or, in chief a scythe blade azure.