Middlemore Family Genealogy

Whittell, Wheathill, etc.-In Nichols's Leicestershire is given a pedigree of the family of Wheathill, or Whithull, of Sheepey, whose name is very variously spelt. They acquired the property of Great Sheepey through marriage with the heiress of the Sheepeys, a family of great antiquity, which descended from Walkelin de Shepey, lord of Sheepey in the time of Henry 11, and continued there for ten generations. Their arms were, Argent two chevrons sable within a bordure azure. Margaret Shepey married, as first wife in 1429, Richard Whithull, living in 1436, who sold her property at Sheepey to the Astleys. His grandson by his second wife Margaret, daughter and co-heir of John de Flandens, of Flandens, Warwickshire, married a granddaughter of Joan Shepey (great-aunt of Margaret) who married Robert de Temple and brought to her husband Great Sheepey. Their great-grandson, Richard Whithull, married in 1578, Dorothy, daughter of John Wrottesley of Wrottesley. This was thus brought about: Gilbert Astley, of Patteshull, was the feudal guardian of Richard Whittell, and as such had the right of "marrying" him, and in 1571 for £63 6s 8d. sold this wardship and marriage to John Wrottesley who agreed to provide Richard with '° meat, drynke, lodgyng, and appayrell " till he came of age, and in due course, John Wrottesley married young Richard to his daughter Dorothy Wrottesley. The indenture by which this transaction was carried out existed at Wrottesley until the disastrous fire there. Fortunately a copy was preserved by General Wrottesley, and to him we are indebted for a note of its contents. Richard Whittell left two daughters, and died 1639, having lived sixty-one years in wedlock. One daughter, Elizabeth, married . . . . Coslynges, and the other, Joyce, married George Middlemore. The arms of Whittell, whose pedigree appears in the Leicestershire Visitation, 1619, are, Argent on a less gules three mullets or.