A Long Time Ago/33 Manors of England

Manors of England

This page is part of A Long Time Ago: A History of the Atkins-Paynter and Allied Families, the chunked book edition on the Wally Atkins Family Wiki.

Book section: Manors of England
Page range in the book: 242-246
Chunk order: 33 of 36

This section details the pre-colonial English manorial seats, estates, and county origins of the allied families who settled 17th-century Virginia.

Map of Ancestral English Manors

The interactive map below surveys the historic family manors, halls, and parishes across England:

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English Lineages to Virginia Colonists Diagram

The diagram below connects the English manorial families to their colonial Virginia emigrant descendants:

graph TD subgraph Norfolk_Branch["Norfolk: Thorowgood & Flowerdew"] KL["King's Lynn / Grimston"] --> AT["Capt. Adam Thorowgood (1604–1640)"] HETH["Hethersett Manor"] --> TF["Temperance Flowerdew (1590–1628)"] end subgraph Midlands_Branch["Midlands: Offley & Throckmorton"] MAD["Madeley Manor, Staffordshire"] --> SO["Sarah Offley (1609–1657)"] COUGH["Coughton Court, Warwickshire"] --> THROCK["Throckmorton Allied Line"] end subgraph London_Kent["London & Kent: Yeardley & Barne"] SOU["Southwark / Merchant Taylors"] --> SGY["Sir George Yeardley (ca. 1587–1627)"] WOOL["Woolwich & Eltham, Kent"] --> BARNE["Barne Alliance"] end AT --- SO SGY --- TF AT --> VA["Tidewater Virginia Alliances<br/>(Lawson, Atkins, Paynter)"] SGY --> VA

English Ancestral Manors Tree

Historical Significance

The manorial connections preserved in A Long Time Ago demonstrate that the 17th-century Virginia arrivals were not random wanderers, but younger sons, merchants, and gentlefolk drawn from established English landed families and livery companies. Their transatlantic migration transplanted English legal customs, parish administration, church architecture, and naming conventions directly to the Virginia shores.