Farnefold versus Farden

Sir Thomas Farnefold of Steyning, Sussex was born in 1599. His father was Richard Farnefold and his mother Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Parson, a Steyning yeoman.

The Farnefold family had resided at Gatewick House Steyning since the 1540s and Thomas inherited the estate in 1611 at the age of 12. However he became a ward of the Crown with Sir Thomas Leedes appointed the wardship. In 1613 Leedes moved to the Netherlands with the Farnefold estate being transferred to Sir Edward Sackville and then to Bartholomew Rogers, usher of the Court of Wards. Rogers married Farnefold to his eldest daughter Dorothy in 1616. Bartholomew Rogers got permission from William Knollys the Viscount Wallingford, and Master of the Wards to cut down the estate’s timber. In 1621, upon the death of Rogers, Sir Thomas Farnefold now aged twenty-two, petitioned parliament that his estate had been left bare of trees and that a sum of £3000 had been embezzled from him. However the unresolved dispute with Knollys resulted in Sir Thomas Farnefold being imprisoned in 1622 in the Marshalsea Prison.

This did not stop Sir Thomas Farnefold, upon his release, being elected Member of Parliament for Steyning in 1624 and then again in 1625. In 1627 he contested the appointment of a Bartholomew Rogers heir as usher to the Court of Wards, repeating the claim that his Farnefold estate had been embezzled. Sir Thomas Farnefold was then himself made Usher of the Court of the Wards. In 1628 he was elected to parliament again. In 1634 Sir Thomas Farnefold, while in prison for a second time, complained that William Winchell, arms painter and stainer of St George’s parish, London, had falsified and fabricated the genealogy of a Peter Farnden of Sedlescombe Sussex. Peter Farnden was an ironmaster who owned the iron forges at Crowhurst, Brede, Westfield and Beckley. Winchell had given Farnden the ancient shield of arms and genealogy that actually belonged to Sir Thomas Farnefold.

Representing Sir Thomas Farnfold in the case held in the Court of Chivalry on the 26th of April, the 3rd and of 21st of May 1634 was the solicitor Doctor Arthur Duck. In a statement of evidence, Doctor Duck explained, “many individuals of plebeian origins and parentage, frequently and daily bear and display the arms and insignia of ancient gentry on their shields, windows, seals and in their funeral pomp, against the law of arms and to the disgrace and injury of the ancient nobility and gentry of this kingdom. Through this practice many errors and abuses were perpetrated to the injury of the nobility and gentry.” Winchell, the arms painter, in testimony claimed he knew of no coat of arms being falsified until he was shown his work. He then confessed that the Farnden brothers Peter and Richard had originally shown him the coat of arms and commissioned him to paint it for their father’s funeral. Doctor Duck called for Winchell to be suspended from his position as licensed arms painter to the Earl Marshall and requested that Winchell was committed to the custody of the knight marshal Edmund Verney. The coat of arms in question when painted upon a shield was coloured purple with two leopard heads about a yellow chevron filled with red shields, and beneath was a third leopard’s head. In April 1640, Sir Thomas Farnefold was elected to the short parliament, as the House of Commons sat until November the same year. He was then elected again as MP for Steyning in what became known as the long parliament, as the session lasted until March 1644. However ill health prevented him from sitting as an MP this time around and he died in 1643. He was buried at Steyning in March 1644

Gatewick House