Middlemore Family Genealogy

The senior line of Middlemore had continued as lords of Edgbaston for nearly three centuries, holding all that time a leading position amongst the county gentry of Warwickshire. It will have been noticed that they were considerable benefactors to the church, as the foundation of the chantry in Studley church and the benefactions of Dame Margery Middlemore to Edgbaston testify. When the reformation came, they remained strong adherents of the older order of things, and suffered accordingly in an age in which toleration was unknown. One member of the family, for we may include the Blessed Humphrey Middlemore, was in 1535 put to death for refusing to acknowledge the pretensions of Henry VIII. The Recusant Rolls of a later date indicate how they suffered in their possessions for their steadfast adherence to their religion; and their political opinions at a later date, when they preferred the cause of Charles rather than that of the Parliament, led to the imposition of still further penalties, as the royalist composition papers testify. Nor were they merely passive onlookers, but they took an active part in support of their beliefs. . The Squire of Edgbaston was present at the siege of Hawkesley House. His kinsman, George Middlemore of Haselwell, was a captain on the side of the king, with the result that all three branches suffered heavily in purse, Hawkesley House was burnt, and Richard Middlemore saw his own mansion of Edgbaston a garrison for the Parliament, and the church, the burial place of his family, wholly demolished, and moreover had the mortification of seeing his possessions appropriated by " Tinker" Fox and the Parliamentary party. Had the Middlemores forsaken their principles and shared in the plunder of the religious houses in the sixteenth century, and had they in the seventeenth joined the Parliamentarians, or at any rate remained neutral, they would have avoided the disasters which befell them, and with their already considerable position might even have founded some great territorial family. The memory of men who do not hesitate to uphold their civil opinions and religious creed, even to their temporal loss, is rightly honoured, and amongst such as these are to be numbered the Middlemores of Edgbaston, Haselwell, and Hawkesley.