Early Middlemores
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he surname of Middlemore in its origin is evidently local, and its significance is obvious, though no place so known is to be found mentioned in any of the usual sources of information. There is no parish nor, as far as can be discovered, is there any manor or estate known by the name, save that in an index to some of the more ancient Close Rolls mention is made of a Forest of Middlemore in Nidderdale in Yorkshire; while a " Midelmorwude" in Devon occurs in the Testa de Neville "and a field called Middlemore," in Walsoken near Norwich, is mentioned in a deed calendared among the "Ancient Deeds" in the Public Record Office.
The Middlemores can be traced continuously in the neighbourhood of Birmingham right back into the early years of the fourteenth century, when we have mention of Simon de Middelmore, Roger de Middelmore, and John de Midelmore, who were living at Solihull, Tanworth, and Studley about the year 1329, and it therefore seems probable that the moor from which they derived their name was situated not far from Birmingham.
In Shaw's " Staffordshire," under Great Barr, we have mention of Middlemore. According to Erdeswick, ;'>" by a very ancient deed, sans date, it appears that one Stephen was lord of Barr, and confirms to Robert son of Jordan de Alrewic and his heirs a certain moor called Middlemore, to be held of him and his heirs for ever upon paying yearly one penny of silver, etc. Witnesses: Roger de Aston, William de Alrewic, etc." There does not appear to be any evidence to show that this Middlemore was the place from which the family derived its name, though Alrewic-now Aldridge-is so near to their earliest known abode that it would be wrong to omit mention of it when discussing their origin. Great Barr is about four miles north-west of Birmingham, while Tanworth and Solihull, with which we know the Middlemores were connected in the time of Edward III., are but a few miles to the south-east, and it is quite probable that, like several other families, they took their name from one of the moors which were then numerous in that district of Warwickshire known as Arden, but which have long been enclosed, and cannot now be identified.
The difficulty in accepting the Middlemore in Aldridge, or Great Barr, as the original home of the family lies in this, that though an immense amount of record information relating to Staffordshire from the eleventh to the fifteenth century has been published by the William Salt Society, yet nothing appears during that period concerning Middlemore as the name of either a place or a family, though the printed records include the Subsidy Rolls of 1327 and 1332-3,in both of which a list of residents in Barr and Aldridge appears.
At the same time it must be added that, as Jordan de Aldridge appears [1]on an Assize Roll of 5 John (A.D. 1203), there was an abundance of time between then and the earliest appearance of the Middlemores in Warwickshire, for the " de Alrewic " family which obtained Middlemore to have left its original home and established itself in prosperity under a new surname at Solihull, Tanworth, and Studley.
Of the spelling of the name there is little to be said. It is one subject to little variation in form. Occasionally, though rarely, it has been contracted into Mildmore, and there was a family settled in Sussex known as Midmore, which quite possibly was an offshoot of the Hawkesley Middlemores. Save for this the spellings have been:
Middlemore Mydlemore
Midlemore Medlemore
Midelmore Myddylmore
Middlemoore Myddulmore.
They are chiefly the ordinary variations found in medieval spelling, and do not in any way obscure the identity of the name. The only existing variant still occasionally to be found is that of Middlemoor, and it must be taken rather as a misspelling than as a distinct and permanent form.
At the present time Middlemore, which never was one of frequent occurrence, must be regarded as one of the rarest English surnames. The Registrar-General's index of births, deaths, and marriages at Somerset House, which has now been in existence for upwards of sixty years, records only 67 Middlemore births. Assuming, then, that the Middlemore births bear the same proportion to the number of Middlemores living that births throughout the country do to the whole population, we may estimate the total number of Middlemores now living to be less than fifty all told.
The localities with which the name of Middlemore is now chiefly connected are Birmingham, Liverpool, Gloucestershire, London, and Cumberland. Formerly there were branches settled in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Northamptonshire, which all ranked among the gentry, and whose pedigrees may be found in various visitations of the heralds in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but today these branches are all extinct in the male line.
The principal existing family is that which now for nearly five hundred years has been distinguished from other lines by the name of its ancient residence as " Middlemore of Hawkesley." To this line belong the Middlemores of Birmingham and those at Liverpool mentioned in the Registrar-General's indexes. Their history may be carried back to the early years of the fourteenth century.
Of the other existing Middlemores named in these indexes, those in Gloucestershire, though now in humble circumstances, can be traced back in the neighbourhood of Stroud for some three and a half centuries, and seem to have held, until the present century, the position of well-to-do yeomen and manufacturers of cloth. They were doubtless descended from the Warwickshire family, but from which branch cannot now be decided, though it is possible that they may come from an early offshoot of the Edgbaston line, some of whom there is reason to believe were at an early date engaged in the cloth trade in London and Bristol.
The few of the name who are found in modern times in London seem to come from a family which has been settled there for some considerable time; it would not be an easy task, probably not even possible in the absence of wills, to deduce the pedigree of persons of lowly station living in London for upwards of a century. From the circumstance that we know that a branch of the Haselwell Middlemores, the descendants of Josiah Middlemore, settled in London in the seventeenth century and can be traced continuously to the middle of the last century, it is possible that the London Middlemores recorded by the Registrar-General came from that stock.
Of the origin of one humble family of the name living of recent years in various places in the neighbourhood of Birmingham, no account can be given. Without documentary evidences, and without the assistance of even tradition, it is impossible to form even a theory as to their origin.
In Carlisle and the North there is a small clan of Middlemores, who at the earliest date from which they can be traced were connected with Thursby in Cumberland. They are in lowly circumstances, but give as a tradition that they descend from three brothers who were at the battle of Waterloo, and further that they " came from the South."
As we shall see when treating in detail of the early Middlemores in the fourteenth century, the race first appears to our view in the first year of King Edward the Third, when they were settled at Tanworth and Solihull in Warwickshire. Here they continued, evidently, from the glimpses we obtain of them in the Plea Rolls, being people of consideration and means, until at the close of the fourteenth century we find that Thomas Middlemore, a citizen of London, married the heiress of Sir Richard de Edgbaston, lord of the manor of Edgbaston, which henceforth became the seat of his family until the elder line became extinct about the close of the seventeenth century, when the Middlemore estates of Edgbaston and Solihull were parted between the female heirs, by whom they were sold early in the following century. Edgbaston, the well-known residential quarter of Birmingham, was thus in possession of the Middlemores for something like 300 years, and part at least of the Solihull property for even a longer period, how long indeed we are not able to even guess. By the acquisition of Edgbaston, the Middlemores, already a family of position and means, further assured their position among the gentry of Warwickshire; and when in the sixteenth century they acquired by marriage part of the Greswold estates in Solihull, and by purchase the manor of Olton in the-same parish, they possessed a property which, but for their adherence to the ancient faith, must have led to their further advancement.
Figure 2 Key Pedigree A, Showing the principle families
How they suffered in estate, the numerous entries relating to them in the Recusant Rolls abundantly testify. Yet hampered as they were by the disabilities imposed in those days on Roman Catholics, the Edgbaston and the Hawkesley Middlemores nevertheless maintained their standing, and matched with good families, until the disastrous period of the Civil Wars, in which, with apparently only one exception, every branch of the Middlemores remained loyal to King Charles and took up arms on his behalf. As a consequence, the mansions of the Edgbaston and Hawkesley Middlemores were both occupied by hostile garrisons and destroyed, their estates, as also those of their Haselwell and Lincolnshire kinsmen, were sequestrated by the Parliamentarians, and the fortunes of all four lines, but especially those of the Hawkesley Middlemores, were very seriously impaired.
Two generations after Thomas Middlemore, the London merchant, had married the heiress Isabella de Edgbaston, John Middlemore, a younger son, married Alice Sye, who brought to him Haselwell, which had descended to her from her grandmother, who was daughter of William Haselwell of Haselwell. Thus originated the Middlemores of Haselwell, a reputed manor in King's Norton adjoining Edgbaston. This line continued to be " of Haselwell " until the early part of the eighteenth century, when Haselwell Hall was sold. William Middlemore, the last of the family to reside there, died a bachelor in 1704. But though the senior line thus failed the family did not then become extinct. A younger son, George Middlemore, a wealthy Russian merchant, became ancestor of the Middlemores of Grantham and of General George Middlemore, whose son, Col. Robert Frederick Middlemore of Thorngrove near Worcester, who died without issue in 1896, was the last of his race. The Middlemores of Haselwell sent off also another junior branch, whose pedigree is recorded in the Visitation of Northamptonshire, though they at last settled at Stanton by-Dale in Derbyshire, but became extinct in the male line about 17I9, the representation of them passing to a branch of the Pilkington family.
A younger son of the Middlemores of Edgbaston, in the generation prior to the branching off of the Haselwell line, married the heiress of Richard de Hawkeslowe, a family who took their name from a small manor also in King's Norton parish, which thus gave a distinctive title to the still existing family of Middlemore of Hawkeslowe, or Hawkesley, as the place is now generally known. From the Middlemores of Hawkesley descended the Middlemores of Enfield, afterwards of Lincolnshire (but not to be confused with the Middlemores of Grantham), some of whom occupied positions at the Courts of Elizabeth and James I : they became extinct in the middle of the last century. Descended also from this family were the Middlemores of Sussex, who were settled in that county for one or two generations, and appear to have come to an end in the person of Thomas Middlemore, who died about the end of the seventeenth century.
It is important to bear in mind these three main divisions of the Middlemores into the lines of Edgbaston, Haselwell, and Hawkesley, for upon them rests the arrangement of this history of the family. It is remarkable that each of these properties was derived from a family which took its name there from, of which two, Haselwell and Hawkesley, were in the same parish of King's Norton, which also adjoins Edgbaston, while all three are within a very few miles of the earliest known homes of the Middlemores at Solihull, Tanworth, and Studley in the county of Warwick.
In the next chapter the scattered references to the early Middlemores will be given in detail. This will be followed by the Middlemores of Edgbaston; taking as the starting point the first named John: de. Middlemore of the Heralds' Visitations, who for the purpose of this history may be regarded as the stockfather of the race. After their history has been exhausted will come the Middlemores of Haselwell, and the cadet branches of Middlemore of Stepney, 
Middlemore of Grantham, and Middlemore of Northamptonshire and Derbyshire. Last in order will be the Hawkesley Middlemores, who were the earliest to branch off from the Edgbaston line, and their cadets the Middlemores of Enfield and Lincolnshire. When all those Middlemores who are known to descend from Thomas Middlemore and Isabella Edgbaston have been fully dealt with, particulars will be given of other families of Middlemores, such as the Middlemores of Gloucestershire, whose connection with the Warwickshire family so far remains untraced.
The armorial bearings used by the Middlemores-per chevron, in chief two moorcocks-like most ancient heraldry, are very simple in character; and further, they obviously belong to the "canting" or allusive class of coats-of-arms. The crest-a moor-cock sitting in the middle of reedy grass, or as in the middle of a moor-is evidently a further play upon the name. It does not seem possible to ascertain the source of these arms. They were certainly in use in the fifteenth century; and from the fact that all armigerous branches of the family have continuously quartered the arms of the Edgbaston heiress, it is reasonable to infer that they were borne by the Middlemores at a still earlier date. However this may be, and whatever be their origin, these arms were allowed without question at several of the Heralds' Visitations.
These arms are of course rightfully due to all the descendants of Thomas Middlemore and Isabella Edgbaston who bear his name; but- john Francis Richard Middlemore, who was the younger surviving son of Richard Middlemore of Grantham and a descendant of the Middlemores of Haselwell, bore, as his plate still existing in Henry the Seventh's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, under the banner of the Earl of Tyrconnel, his kinsman, whose esquire he was when that nobleman was created Knight of the Bath, shows-per chevron argent and sable three moorcocks counterchanged. And the Middlemores of Enfield recorded their pedigree at the Lincolnshire Visitation in 1634, giving for their arms a chevron between three moorcocks sable, and as their crest a moorcock. Probably some difficulty in the way of satisfying the heralds by adequate evidence that they were descended from the Warwickshire family will account for the adoption of these variant arms. Indeed, the arms of the Enfield Middlemores are entered without colours, with the reference " Vide Warr & Midd." In neither case can any authority for their use be discovered.
As far back as we can trace them, the Middlemore family has been found in the ranks of the gentry, and their position is indicated by a sentence occurring in some old Chancery pleadings : "The family of the Middlemores is an ancient and honourable one.
[1] As "Jordan de Alrewust," for Alrewic. It seems clear from the above quotation from Erdeswick, and from other sources, that it is Aldridge, not Alrewas, that is intended.-Wm. Salt Soc., vol. iii., p. 89.