Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 29 May 2026 by Allen Gurney

These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.

Thomas Gournay II (G20) Notes

Research notes for g20-thomas-gournay-ii-fact-sheet.md. See .claude/rules/research-files.md for the paired-file rule.

Working Notes

Thomas II’s seal — Hunstanton Hall deed (DG-Supp Note 126)

2026-04-18 — DG-Supp Note 126 (p. 814) records a deed of feoffment dated 8 June 1445 (20 Henry VI): Sir Thomas Kerdeston, Sir William Oldhalle, Thomas Gurnay, Esq., and others, to John Wode of Berston and others, of the manor called Waldgraves in East Barsham.

“The seal of Thomas Gurnay on the fifth label is a poor impression in red wax of what must originally have been a beautiful signet. The legend is scarcely discernible.”

The deed survives in the charter room of Hunstanton Hall. This is a primary source — a surviving document sealed by Thomas II in 1445. The Hunstanton connection (the Le Strange family seat) suggests the Gurneys were part of the north-Norfolk gentry network centered on the Harpley/Barsham area.

Significance for dating: The 1445 deed proves Thomas II was active in 1445, adding a data point beyond the existing range. The Boking fine (DG-Supp Note 123) implies Thomas I was dead before 1444. So Thomas II was acting as head of the family by 1444–1445.

Jernegan of Somerleyton — Danish origins and Spelman correction (DG-Supp Note 127)

2026-04-18 — DG-Supp Note 127 (pp. 815–816) provides detail on Thomas II’s wife Margaret’s family:

  • The Jernegans’ Danish tradition “does not appear to rest upon any documentary evidence; but is nevertheless very likely true, as these traditions are generally founded on fact.”
  • No Jernegan in Domesday Book, but in the Liber Niger Scaccarii (1167), “Hugh de Gernegan held one knight’s fee of the honor of Eye.” This Hugh was son of the original Jernegan.
  • The Jernegans of Somerleyton are ancestors of the Jerninghams of Cossey — “the only one existing at the present day.”
  • Critical: Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Jernegan, was wife of Thomas Gurney II. DG proves this by: (a) John Jernegan’s letter to Margaret Paston (DG-I p. 391); (b) Elizabeth White’s legacy to “her niece Margaret wife of Thomas Gurnay” (DG-I p. 395).
  • Spelman correction: “Sir H. Spelman is therefore wrong in stating, at page 318, that Margaret Jernegan married John Gournay V.” She married Thomas II, not Sir John.

The 1471 will — textile bequest (DG-I p. 282)

2026-04-18 — Already in existing companion and fact sheet. DG-I p. 282: “all the woolen and linen cloths are left to Margaret his wife, being her own work and that of her servants.” This is rare first-person evidence of a 15th-century gentry wife running a productive household textile operation.

The will also shows Thomas II had three residences: West Barsham, Harpley, and a Norwich town house in St Gregory’s parish. DG-I p. 280 explains: “every manor had a residence for the lord, where, before the existence of rents, he removed with his family to consume the produce of each estate.”

The will itself survives as a register copy at the Norfolk Record Office in the Norwich Consistory Court will register Jekkys, folio 211 — the primary-register text that lies behind DG-I’s English extracts (pp. 280-282) of the three-residence and Margaret-textile-bequest clauses.[1]

Wars of the Roses context

2026-04-18 — Thomas II died and was buried during the closing weeks of the Wars of the Roses. Will proved 27 July 1471 — about twelve weeks after Edward IV’s decisive victory at Tewkesbury (4 May 1471). No record of Thomas’s alignment. His son William IV served as Escheator under Edward IV (1466) and was feoffee for Lord Scales (1497) — both Yorkist connections (DG-Supp Note 129). This suggests the family was Yorkist, though Thomas II’s own position is undocumented.

Landholdings

Place Period Notes
West Barsham, Norfolk c. 1430–1471 Primary family seat
Harpley, Norfolk c. 1430–1471 Secondary residence; burial option in will
Norwich (St Gregory’s parish) c. 1430–1471 Town house — one of three residences
Hardingham/Swathings, Norfolk c. 1430–1471 Long-standing holding
Depden, Suffolk c. 1430–1471 Wauncy inheritance

Open Questions

  1. Hunstanton Hall deed: Can the 1445 deed (with Thomas II’s seal) be photographed or examined? It survives in the Le Strange charter room.
  2. Margaret Jernegan’s monument: DG-Supp Note 127 describes Sir Thomas Jernegan’s monument in Somerleyton church (Suffolk). Does it survive? Arms: Jernegan impaling Appleyard.
  3. Thomas II’s will full text: DG-I pp. 280–282 extracts key passages but does not give the complete text. Is the original in the Norwich registers?

Sources Consulted

  • DG-I, pp. 280–282 (will extracts: three residences, textile bequest, burial directives). [DG-I]
  • DG-I, p. 286 (pedigree). [DG-I]
  • DG-Supp, Note 126 (p. 814): Thomas II’s seal on 1445 East Barsham feoffment at Hunstanton Hall. [DG-Supp]
  • DG-Supp, Note 127 (pp. 815–816): Jernegan of Somerleyton — Danish origins, Liber Niger entry, Spelman correction, marriage proof. [DG-Supp]
  • DG-Supp, Note 128 (p. 816): A “Thomas Gurnay” presented to Rushmere living 1435 — identity unknown. [DG-Supp]
  • DG-Supp, Note 129 (p. 816): William IV as Escheator, Scales feoffee — Yorkist leanings. [DG-Supp]
  • Blomefield, History of Norfolk, vol. vii, pp. 42–47 (West Barsham). [Blomefield]
  • Suckling, History of Suffolk, part V, p. 55 (Margaret Jernegan marriage proof). [Suckling]

Conflicting Information

Claim Source A Source B Status
Margaret Jernegan married… Spelman (DG-I p. 318): married John Gournay V DG-Supp Note 127: married Thomas Gurney II DG corrects Spelman. Proved by Jernegan letter and Elizabeth White legacy.

Thomas II’s 1471 will — full Blomefield extract (West Barsham parish entry)

Blomefield’s West Barsham parish entry preserves the complete English-summary text of Thomas Gurnay senior’s 1471 will — fuller than Daniel Gurney’s extracts at pages 280-282 of the Record:

“Thomas Gurnay, senior, Esq by his will, dated March 18th, in the 9th of Edward IV. appoints his body to be buried in the chancel of St. Laurence the Martyr, of Harple, if he dies there; and if at Norwich, in the Friar-minors church to whom he gives 40s. to the Austin-friars, Friars-preachers, and Carmes there, 20s. each; to the manors of Walsingham 40s.; to the chapel of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin at Walsingham his gold ring, with a precious jewel set in it, called a turkeys; to Margaret his wife all his utensils, and then to William his son, after her death; appoints his wife, John Jerningham, and Edmund Bokenham, Esq. his executors; and John Heydon, supervisor; his sons, John and Edmund, to whom he confirms all grants made to them out of his manor of Depeden; to the prior of Walsingham 10l. towards a new work there, on condition they remember him and his wife in their beadroll, as brother and sister of that priory; all his manor, or tenement, called Swathyns, in Hardingham, which he bought of Catherine Sturmer, and all his tenements in Norwich to be sold to William his son for 80 marks. This house was in St. Gregory’s parish at Norwich, and John Bernard, a minor of Norwich, was his confessor. This will was proved July 27, 1471.”

New material beyond Daniel Gurney’s summary:

  • Will dated 18 March 1469/70 (9 Edward IV), not just “1471” (which is the probate date).
  • Sons John and Edmund named alongside William IV, with grants confirmed out of the Depden manor in Suffolk. The published Gurney pedigree records only William IV.
  • John Heydon of Baconsthorpe as supervisor. Same Heydon documented in the Paston Letters as William de la Pole 1st Duke of Suffolk’s chief East Anglian agent and joint Duchy of Lancaster steward with Sir Thomas Tuddenham. The 1471 supervisor role places a working Gurney-Heydon alliance 13 years before G18 William V’s 1484 marriage to Anne Heydon.
  • John Jerningham as co-executor — most plausibly Margaret’s brother, anchoring the Jerningham-of-Somerleyton tie.
  • Edmund Bokenham Esquire as co-executor — Bokenham family of Old Buckenham; foreshadows William IV’s daughter Constance’s later marriage to William Bokenham (per the published Gurney pedigree).
  • Catherine Sturmer of Hardingham sold Swathings to Thomas II at an unrecorded earlier date — a new name in the Hardingham descent chain.
  • Norwich house in St Gregory’s parish sold to William for 80 marks (about £53) — the first quantified valuation of any Gurney urban property.
  • John Bernard, a Friar Minor of Norwich, as Thomas II’s confessor — direct tie to the Norwich Greyfriars community.

The Walsingham bequests — 40 shillings to the manors of Walsingham, the gold-turquoise ring to the chapel of the Annunciation, £10 toward a “new work” in exchange for beadroll membership — supplement the family’s earlier 1385 Walsingham grant (Edmund G23 with Calthorpe, Hales, Shelton) and Sir John V’s 1406 Walsingham grant for the Reynham memorial, giving a three-generation pattern of priory patronage at England’s principal Marian pilgrimage shrine.

Full Blomefield West Barsham parish entry (including this will text and the wider Gurney manorial descent) preserved at sources/corpus_supplement/blomefield-norfolk-vol7-pp42-47-west-barsham.md.[2]

1422 “John Gurnay” man-at-arms in Sir Robert Harling’s retinue — Pont Meulan (tentative)

A single 1422 muster in the AHRC medievalsoldier database records “Gurnay, John, Man-at-Arms, Garrison of Poissy / Pont Meulan, Captain Sir Robert Harling (d. 1435), 1 November 1422, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Français 25766, no. 816.”[3] Sir Robert Harling of East Harling, Norfolk, was killed at the siege of Saint Denis in 1435.

The man-at-arms rank places this John Gurnay at gentleman class, consistent with the Norfolk gentry Gurney line, but no identification with any named Gurney from existing pedigrees is warranted. Possibilities include an undocumented son of Robert G22 (a cousin of Thomas I G21) or an unrelated cadet-branch member. The 1422 date sits between Thomas I’s 1418 Harfleur garrison service and his 1441 Vere/York retinue, and reinforces the picture of a Norfolk Gurney military client network in France across Henry V and the early Henry VI minority.

23 April 1452 St George’s Day petition — Thomas II on the Paston-side coalition

A petition from Norwich to the Duke of Norfolk’s deputy at Framlingham, dated St George’s Day (23 April) 1452, signed by Thomas Gurnay (then about 22) alongside ten other Norfolk gentlemen:

SIR JOHN HEVENYNGHAM. JOHN FERRERS. THO. GURNAY. JOHN GROOS. W. ROKEWODE. JOHN BAKON, Senior. JOHN BAKON, Junior. J. PAGRAVE. ROBT. MORTIMER. NICHOLAUS APPILYARD.

The letter complains of “dyvers assaughtes and ryottes made be Charles Nowell and other ageyn the Kyngs lawe and peas, withowte any cause or occacion, up on John Paston and other of owre kynne, frendes and neyghborys.” Charles Nowell was a man of the Heydon-Tuddenham faction operating under William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, in East Anglia.

This places Thomas II on the Paston / anti-Heydon side of the 1452 East Anglian dispute — politically opposite to where he would land in 1471, when his will named John Heydon himself as supervisor. The intervening realignment is well documented: the 1461 Yorkist accession upended the East Anglian power map; the Suffolk-Heydon faction collapsed with the duke’s 1450 murder and the duchess Alice’s marginalization; Heydon paid 500 marks for a Yorkist pardon in 1462 and rebuilt his career in the new order. By 1471 the Norfolk gentry coalitions had reshuffled, and the men who had stood against Heydon as young adults were now content to use him as a senior legal supervisor.

Two of the co-signers reappear in the later Gurney record: Nicholas Appleyard (the same family supplies the feoffee on William IV’s 1505 trust) and John Groos (whose 1487 will would bequeath the Irstead manors that, through the Heydons, eventually anchor G16 Francis’s later “of Irstead” designation). The 1452 petition therefore preserves a snapshot of the Norfolk gentry network that, half a century later, would crystallise around the West Barsham estate in the 1505 trust deed.

Full letter text preserved at sources/corpus_supplement/paston-letters-gairdner-gurney-extracts.md §2.[4]

Margaret Gurnay (Jerningham) in correspondence with Elizabeth de Vere, Countess of Oxford

An undated letter from Elizabeth de Vere, Countess of Oxford, to John Paston (preserved in Gairdner vol. II) references prior personal correspondence with Margaret Gurnay:

And I sent a letter to Margaret Gurnay byfore Cristemesse of certeyn langage that I herd, wich plesed me nowght, and so I prayed my Lord to gif me leve to wrytte to hir; and therfore and ye here any thyng, answere, as my trust is in yow.

Margaret Gurnay is Margaret Jerningham, wife of G20 Thomas Gournay II — no other Margaret Gurnay is documented in the Norfolk gentry record of the period. Elizabeth de Vere (born Elizabeth Howard, daughter of John Howard 1st Duke of Norfolk) was Countess of Oxford as wife of John de Vere 12th Earl of Oxford, who was executed in February 1462 by Edward IV after the failed Lancastrian Oxford plot. The letter is therefore most plausibly dated pre-1462, late 1450s.

The Countess had written to Margaret personally about something Margaret said that “plesed me nowght” and had to ask her husband’s permission to do so — implying a real if delicate personal correspondence between the two women.

This extends the Vere connection beyond G21 Thomas I’s 1441 retinue service under John de Vere 13th Earl of Oxford into the women’s correspondence circle of the next generation. Gairdner’s editorial dating is provisional; the Davis revised edition would supply tighter dating.

Full letter text preserved at sources/corpus_supplement/paston-letters-gairdner-gurney-extracts.md §3.[5]

Armstrong 1781 — 1447 Berningham’s attorney-delivery of seisin

Mostyn John Armstrong, The History and Antiquities of the County of Norfolk, vol. 5 (Norwich, 1781), in the Gallow Hundred entry for East Barsham’s Berningham’s / Knold’s / Waldgrave’s Manor, records that on 10 March 25 Henry VI (1447) Robert Mompynson of Wisbich and Catherine his wife (widow of William Hunt of East Barsham) enfeoffed John Wode of Honingham, Margery his wife, and their son Robert in four messuages and four tofts at East Barsham and Snoring called Berningham’s. “At the said time, a Thomas Gurney, esq. their attorney, to deliver seisin to John Wode and Margery, and to Robert, son of the said John and Margery.”

Daniel Gurney’s Supplement records that G21 Thomas Gournay I was probably dead before 1444; the 1447 attorney is therefore most parsimoniously G20 Thomas Gournay II, supplying a dated attestation that fills the gap between the 1445 Hunstanton seal (Daniel Gurney Supplement Note 126, p. 814) and the 1452 St George’s Day Norwich petition to the Duke of Norfolk’s deputy (already in the G20 fact-sheet narrative). The Berningham’s transaction also confirms the persistence of the Catherine, widow of William Hunt of East Barsham through into a remarriage to Robert Mompynson of Wisbich — the same Catherine who released her right to John Wode in the 1440 Woolterton’s confirmation Thomas Gournay also brokered (see G21 companion).[6]

  1. Norfolk Record Office, Norwich Consistory Court will register Jekkys, folio 211, will of Thomas Gurnay of Harpley, 1471. NRO online catalogue: http://nrocat.norfolk.gov.uk. Source ID: nro-ncc-wills-registers. ↩︎

  2. Francis Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, vol. vii (London: William Miller, 1807), “Gallow and Brothercross Hundreds: West-Barsham,” pp. 42-47, British History Online. Source ID: blomefield-norfolk. Full per-parish extract at sources/corpus_supplement/blomefield-norfolk-vol7-pp42-47-west-barsham.md. ↩︎

  3. John Gurnay, Man-at-Arms, Garrison of Poissy / Pont Meulan, Captain Sir Robert Harling (d. 1435); Muster Roll Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Français 25766, no. 816; 1 November 1422. AHRC-funded Soldier in Later Medieval England Online Database: www.medievalsoldier.org. Source ID: medievalsoldier-database. ↩︎

  4. James Gairdner, ed., The Paston Letters, A.D. 1422-1509, 6 vols. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1904), vol. II, letter dated St George’s Day (23 April) 1452, written from Norwich to the Duke of Norfolk’s deputy at Framlingham. Project Gutenberg vol. II: www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/40989/pg40989.txt. Source ID: paston-letters-gairdner. Full extract preserved at sources/corpus_supplement/paston-letters-gairdner-gurney-extracts.md §2. ↩︎

  5. James Gairdner, ed., The Paston Letters, A.D. 1422-1509, 6 vols. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1904), vol. II, undated letter from Elizabeth de Vere, Countess of Oxford, to John Paston Squire, signed “OXENFORD / ELYZABETH DE VEER,” dated “the first day of February” with no year. Project Gutenberg vol. II: www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/40989/pg40989.txt. Source ID: paston-letters-gairdner. Full extract preserved at sources/corpus_supplement/paston-letters-gairdner-gurney-extracts.md §3. ↩︎

  6. Mostyn John Armstrong, The History and Antiquities of the County of Norfolk, vol. 5 (Norwich, 1781), Gallow Hundred entry for East Barsham — Berningham’s / Knold’s / Waldgrave’s Manor: “In the 25th of Henry VI. March 9, John Hines, of Swaffham in Norfolk, sells to John Wode the manor of Berningham for fifty marks; and on the 10th of the said month, Robert Mompynson, of Wisbich, and Catherine his wife, late wife of William Hunt, of East-Basham, enfeoffed John Wode, of Honingham, and Margery his wife, &c. in four messuages, four tofts, &c. called Berningham’s, in this town, and Snoring… and, at the said time, a Thomas Gurney, esq. their attorney, to deliver seisin to John Wode and Margery, and to Robert, son of the said John and Margery.” Internet Archive item bim_eighteenth-century_history-and-antiquities-_armstrong-mostyn-john_1781_5. Source ID: armstrong-norfolk-1781. ↩︎