Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 7 April 2026 by Allen Gurney WIP / Draft

Henry Gurney (1548/49 – 1615/16)

Ancestor fact sheet for G15 in the direct Gurney line. Last Gurney born Roman Catholic; Elizabethan poet and bibliophile of Great Ellingham; father of twelve, including Francis Gurney of London (G14) and Edmund Gurney the Puritan divine. Updated April 2026.

Born
21 January 1548 (Old Style; = 1549 modern reckoning), West Barsham Hall, Norfolk. Eldest son of Francis Gurney (G16) and Helen Holditch. Inherited as grandson and heir of Anthony Gurney (G17), aged 21 at his grandfather's death in January 1555/6 — recorded independently by the Norfolk topographer Francis Blomefield. Family tradition gives his godmother as a Lady Catherine Howard. 1
Died
1615 or early 1616. Date contested between sources; will proved 1623. See Research Appendix. 2
Occupation / Status / Religion
Lord of West Barsham (held by one knight's fee of the manor of Castleacre), Great Ellingham (held of the heirs of Lord Bardolph), Harpley, Irstead (held of the Bishop of Norwich), and "Gurney's manor" in Hingham (held of the heirs of Henry Lord Morley). All five tenures confirmed by Blomefield's parish surveys for 1572. The last member of the Gurney family to be born a Roman Catholic; conformed to the Church of England as an adult. 3
Buried
Epitaph verse to "Henry Gournay squire" preserved in connection with Great Ellingham parish church (St James the Apostle); the Pease/Pennyghael genealogy gives a burial date of February 1615 at West Barsham. See Research Appendix. 4
Marriage
Ellen (Helen) Blennerhasset — daughter of John Blennerhasset, Esq., of Banham, Suffolk, established East Anglian gentry. Mother of "13 children gat, seven sons and daughters five in life" — twelve surviving children, including Francis Gurney (G14) the Merchant Taylor and Edmund Gurney (1577–1648) the Puritan divine. 5

Highlights

  • The last Gurney born a Roman Catholic — godchild of a Howard. Born January 1548/9, in the brief interval between Henry VIII's death (Jan 1547) and the full enforcement of Edward VI's Protestant settlement. His godmother was reportedly Lady Catherine Howard of the Norfolk Howard ducal house. He conformed to the Church of England as an adult, but his 1614 will warned his sons against holding "fantastical opinions" — phrasing aimed at both recusant Catholic and militant Puritan extremes. 6
  • An Elizabethan poet rediscovered in the Bodleian — 600 of his own verses, plus a library catalogue and book reviews of Spenser. In 2005 the literary scholar Steven W. May published a study in Spenser Studies identifying Henry as "a heretofore unknown and unstudied Elizabethan poet, critic, and bibliophile." Henry's commonplace book (Bodleian MS Tanner 175, 239 leaves) preserves 600+ poems of his own composition, an inventory of his library, and his verse "censures" of more than twenty borrowed books, including Spenser's Faerie Queene, John Foxe, Robert Southwell, Richard Hakluyt, and Nicholas Breton. May calls Henry's correspondence circle "the most extensive coterie of named individuals identified to date in the Tudor and early-Stuart period." 7
  • Father of Edmund Gurney, the Puritan divine. Henry's third son Edmund (1577–1648) was Cambridge-educated, became Rector of Edgefield in 1614 and Harpley in 1620, and is the subject of his own Dictionary of National Biography entry. When cited by his bishop for not wearing his surplice and told he must always wear it, Edmund "came home, and rode a journey with it on" — preserved by Thomas Fuller in Worthies of England. 8
  • Father of Francis Gurney (G14) — the bridge to America. Henry's sixth son Francis was sent to London, apprenticed in the Merchant Taylors' Company and admitted to its freedom in 1606. Through Francis runs the chain that almost certainly leads to John Gurney-1 of Braintree, Massachusetts, and from there to Brigadier General William Gurney of Charleston (G6) and to Allen Gurney today. 9
  • Repurchased Harpley in 1587 — three centuries after his ancestors had held it. Harpley had been the Norfolk Gurney seat from Matthew de Gournay (G29, c. 1183) through the 14th century before West Barsham took over. Henry's repurchase was a deliberate act of restoration; he presented to its church living in 1588 and again in 1602. He also bought the West Barsham rectory from Thomas Fermor in 1595 for £100, the deed preserved at Hunstanton Hall. 10
  • His tomb verse survives — and tells us how he wished to be remembered. The epitaph preserved by Verily Anderson reads in part: "So here doth rest the corpse of clay / Of Henry Gournay squire... By Blennerhasset so his wife, / He 13 children gat, / Seven sons and daughters five in life, / At once upon him sat." The verse uses the older spelling "Gournay" already going out of family use, and reduces his entire reckoning to two facts: his Blennerhasset wife and his twelve surviving children. 11

Children

Henry "13 children gat" by Ellen Blennerhasset, of whom 12 survived. Francis Blomefield's History of Norfolk (vol. i, p. 488) records that the West Barsham/Great Ellingham succession passed through Henry's eldest son line to grandson Edward, then to a 9-year-old Henry II, and on extinction in 1661 to a daughter Margaret. The direct line in this project runs through the sixth son, Francis (G14).

Name Dates Notes
Thomas Gurney III b. 1572 – d. 1614 Eldest son. Baptised 15 May 1572 at West Barsham. Married Martha Lewknor of Denham, Suffolk. Died vita patris. His son Edward Gournay (b. 1608) eventually succeeded Henry as heir of West Barsham and Great Ellingham. 12
Elizabeth Gurney b. 1573 Eldest daughter. 13
Henry Gurney b. 1576 Second son. 13
Edmund Gurney 1577 – 14 May 1648 Third son. Cambridge-educated Puritan divine. Queens' College 1594; B.A. 1600; Norfolk fellow of Corpus Christi 1601; M.A. 1602; B.D. 1609. Rector of Edgefield 1614–1620, then Harpley 1620–1648 (the same Harpley living his ancestors had presented to since the 14th century). Author of Corpus Christi (1619), The Romish Chain (1624), and Toward the Vindication of the Second Commandment (1639). Buried at St Peter Mancroft, Norwich. Has his own entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. 14
Bassingbourne Gurney b. 1580 Fourth son. 15
Anthony Gurney b. 18 September 1581 Twin with Francis. Died vita patris. 15
Francis Gurney b. 18 September 1581 – d. 9 January 1646/7 G14 in the direct line. Twin with Anthony; sixth son. Apprenticed in London; admitted to the Merchant Taylors' Company 16 June 1606; financial agent to the Lestranges of Hunstanton 1612–1636; married Margaret Ryvett (1611) and Anne Browning (c. 1617); buried St Botolph Bishopsgate. Probable father of John Gurney-1 of Braintree, Massachusetts, and ancestor of the Norwich Quaker Gurneys. 16
Five further sons and daughters fl. c. 1580–1620 The Pease/Pennyghael genealogy lists Leonard, Margaret (later wife of Henry Davy of Great Ellingham, in whose female line Great Ellingham eventually descended), Abigail, Anne, Amy, and Mary. Total reaches 12 surviving children consistent with the epitaph verse. 17

Narrative

Henry Gurney’s life is the best-documented in the entire Norfolk Gurney line before the Quaker era, and most of what we know about him comes not from court rolls or chancery cases but from Henry’s own hand. He kept a personal commonplace book, in folio, into which he copied estate accounts, court rolls of Hingham-Gurneys going back to Edward III, leases for Great Ellingham and West Barsham and Irstead, letters from members of the Howard, Vere, and Plantagenet families, his books and what he thought of them, and more than six hundred poems of his own composition. The volume — 239 leaves of careful gentry hand — was bequeathed in the 1730s by Bishop Thomas Tanner of St Asaph (formerly Archdeacon of Norfolk) to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where it has been catalogued since as MS Tanner 175. The Norfolk antiquary Daniel Gurney was alerted to the manuscript in the early 1850s by Markham Thorpe of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and devoted nearly a hundred and twenty pages of his 1858 Supplement to the Record of the House of Gournay to extracts from it. In 2005 the Renaissance scholar Steven W. May, returning to the manuscript fresh, published a study in Spenser Studies describing Henry as “a heretofore unknown and unstudied Elizabethan poet, critic, and bibliophile” whose book-circle is the most extensive yet identified for any private gentleman of the Tudor period.

He was born on 21 January 1548 (Old Style — by modern reckoning, January 1549), at the family seat of West Barsham Hall in north Norfolk, in the closing days of the brief reign of Edward VI’s regents. His father Francis Gurney (G16) was already in fragile health and would die vita patris some time before 1556, leaving the young Henry as eventual heir to his grandfather Anthony Gurney (G17). Anthony — second cousin of the just-executed Queen Anne Boleyn through his Heydon mother, married to Margaret Lovell heiress of the Mortimers of Attleborough — died on 4 January 1555/6, when Henry was 21 years old. Francis Blomefield’s parish survey of West Barsham records the inheritance directly: “Anthony Gournay, Esq. was lord in 1514 … and died January 4, 1555, leaving Henry, his grandson and heir, aged twenty-one years.” Henry succeeded to West Barsham, Great Ellingham, Harpley, Irstead, and Gurney’s manor in Hingham.

He was, the family record insists, the last member of the Gurney family to be born a Roman Catholic. He grew up amid the religious convulsions of the late 1550s — Mary I’s return to Rome, then Elizabeth’s restoration of the reformed church in 1559 — and as an adult conformed to the Church of England, though his eventual will (dated 1614) would warn his sons against holding “fantastical opinions,” a phrase aimed in both directions.

Blomefield’s History of Norfolk confirms his tenures with unusual precision, in three separate parish entries: he held West Barsham by one knight’s fee of the manor of Castleacre; Great Ellingham of the heirs of Lord Bardolph (the manor having come into the family through his great-grandmother Margaret Lovell, after the death without issue of Henry Spelman the elder of “Mickle Elyngham” in 1525); Irstead of the Bishop of Norwich; and Gurney’s manor in Hingham of the heirs of Henry Lord Morley. Blomefield notes that the Hingham manor “always continued in the family of that name residing at Barsham and Great-Elingham,” and confirms Henry as lord there in 1572. The Hingham manor house substantially survives as Gurney’s Manor, Hingham, a Grade II listed building (Historic England list entry 1170752) whose 17th-century rear wing with chambered ceiling beams was built around 1600, in Henry’s own lordship — making it the most direct surviving physical link to G15 of any building in Norfolk.

He was an energetic acquirer of land. In 1587 he purchased the manor of Harpley — bringing back into the family the medieval seat that his ancestors had held from c. 1183 to the 14th century — and presented to its church living in 1588 and 1602. In 1595 he bought the rectory of West Barsham from Thomas Fermor, Esq., for £100, the deed preserved at Hunstanton Hall. Like most Norfolk gentlemen of the period he was principally a sheep-farmer; his estates supported the substantial flocks that fed the Norwich worsted trade.

Of his twelve children who lived to adulthood, three would shape the family’s onward history beyond Norfolk. His eldest son Thomas (sometimes called Thomas III) married Martha Lewknor of Denham, Suffolk, but died in 1614 — a year before his father — leaving Henry’s eventual succession to fall on Henry’s grandson Edward Gournay (b. 1608). His third son Edmund became one of the more openly Puritan-leaning Norfolk clergy of the early Stuart period, the man whom Thomas Fuller would later remember as the rector who, when told he must always wear his surplice, “came home, and rode a journey with it on.” His sixth son Francis (twin to Anthony, G14 in the direct line) was apprenticed to a London Merchant Taylor and would become the bridge to the family’s eventual American descent.

Henry died in 1615 or early 1616. The Pease/Pennyghael genealogy gives 23 February 1615; modern catalogue records (the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts at the Folger, and Steven May 2005) give 1616; his will was not proved until 1623. The epitaph verse preserved by Verily Anderson is the most personal monument we have to him: not the long catalogue of his manors or the inventory of his library, but a plain Protestant quatrain about resurrection, the name of his Blennerhasset wife, and the count of his living children sitting “at once upon him.” It is, in its way, an oddly fitting summary for a man who chose to fill 239 leaves of folio with his own poetry and his own censures of other people’s books, and then to be buried under four lines of someone else’s verse.

Citations

  1. Birth date and parentage from Daniel Gurney, The Record of the House of Gournay (London: privately printed for the author by John Bowyer Nichols and Son, 1848), pedigree p. 287, and the Supplement to the Record of the House of Gournay (King's Lynn: Thew & Son, 1858), pp. 875 ff., extracting Henry's own register (Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 175). The Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts (Folger Shakespeare Library) gives life dates as 1549–1616. The "aged twenty-one at his grandfather's death" detail is independent: 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 — "Anthony Gournay, Esq. ... died January 4, 1555, leaving Henry, his grandson and heir, aged twenty-one years." Available via British History Online. Lady Catherine Howard godmother attribution: family papers in MS Tanner 175 reported in Daniel Gurney's Supplement (1858), p. 875. ↩
  2. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pedigree p. 287, gives "will proved 1623." Pease/Pennyghael Gurney genealogy (Charles E. G. Pease, 2016, http://www.pennyghael.org.uk/Gurney.pdf) gives "died 23 Feb 1615 in West Barsham, Norfolk." The Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts (Folger Shakespeare Library) and Steven W. May, "Henry Gurney, A Norfolk Farmer, Reads Spenser and Others," Spenser Studies 20 (2005), 183–223 (DOI 10.1086/SPSv20p183), both give life dates as 1549–1616. Most likely reconciliation: died 1615 or early 1616, will proved 1623 due to the disrupted succession (his eldest son Thomas III having died in 1614). ↩
  3. Tenures from three separate Blomefield parish entries: Francis Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, vol. i (London: William Miller, 1805), "Hundred of Shropham: Great Elingham," pp. 482–490 — "he was lord in 1572, and at his death it went to Edm. Gurney, Esq. his son and heir ... Henry Gurney, Esq. his son and heir, who held Irsted manor of the Bishop Norwich, Elingham manor of the Lord Bardolf's heirs, West Barsham of the manor of Castle-Acre, by one fee, Gurney's manor in Hingham, of the heirs of Henry Lord Morley, as of his manor of Hingham, and the advowson of the third part of Attleburgh." Blomefield, vol. ii (1805), "Hundred of Forehoe: Hingham," pp. 422–445 — "Henry Gurney was lord in 1572." Blomefield, vol. vii (1807), "Gallow and Brothercross Hundreds: West-Barsham," pp. 42–47. All three available via British History Online. The "last member ... born a Roman Catholic" tradition is in Daniel Gurney, Supplement (1858), p. 875. ↩
  4. Epitaph verse: Verily Anderson, Friends and Relations: Three Centuries of Quaker Families (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980; reprinted 1995, ISBN 1-898030-84-7), p. 21, quoted via the Pease/Pennyghael Gurney genealogy. Pease genealogy: burial at West Barsham, February 1615. Both villages held family tombs in this period — see Research Appendix. ↩
  5. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pedigree p. 287; Daniel Gurney, Supplement (1858), pp. 1003 ff., on the Blennerhasset family. Number of children from the epitaph verse, "He 13 children gat, Seven sons and daughters five in life," via Verily Anderson, Friends and Relations (1980), p. 21, and the Pease/Pennyghael genealogy. ↩
  6. Daniel Gurney, Supplement (1858), p. 875 ("last member ... born a Roman Catholic") and pp. 875 ff. for the will of 1614 and its warning against "fantastical opinions." ↩
  7. Steven W. May, "Henry Gurney, A Norfolk Farmer, Reads Spenser and Others," Spenser Studies 20 (2005), 183–223, DOI 10.1086/SPSv20p183. Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts (CELM, Folger Shakespeare Library), entry on Bodleian MS Tanner 175 at https://celm.folger.edu/repositories/bodleian-tanner.html. Daniel Gurney, Supplement (1858), pp. 875–1000, transcribes substantial extracts. ↩
  8. Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 23 (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1890), s.v. "Gurney, Edmund (d. 1648)," available via Wikisource at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Gurney,_Edmund_(d.1648). Cambridge career: matriculated Queens' College 30 October 1594; B.A. 1600; Norfolk fellow of Corpus Christi 1601; M.A. 1602; B.D. 1609. Rector of Edgefield 1614, Harpley 1620. The "rode a journey with it on" anecdote: Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (London: J.G.W.L. and W.G., 1662), p. 258. The DNB entry cites Fuller; Robert Masters, The History of the College of Corpus Christi and the B. Virgin Mary in the University of Cambridge (rev. ed., Cambridge: J. Smith, 1831), p. 338; Daniel Gurney's Record pp. 463–7 and Supplement pp. 1011–12; and Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. viii, p. 458, and vol. ix, p. 389. Buried St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, 14 May 1648. ↩
  9. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), p. 282: "From one of these younger sons the present family of the Gurneys of Keswick is descended." For the descent through Francis (G14) to Norwich, Earlham Hall, Gurney's Bank, Elizabeth Fry, Joseph John Gurney, and the Buxtons, see Verily Anderson, Friends and Relations (1980), and the Wikipedia article "Gurney family (Norwich)" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurney_family_(Norwich). For the American line via John Gurney-1 of Braintree, Massachusetts, see the G14 Francis Gurney fact sheet. ↩
  10. Daniel Gurney, Supplement (1858), pp. 875 ff., extracting Henry Gurney's register: Harpley purchased 1587, presentations 1588 and 1602; West Barsham rectory purchased from Thomas Fermor, Esq., for £100 in 1595 ("deed at Hunstanton Hall"); presentation to a third part of Attleborough church in 1581. ↩
  11. Verily Anderson, Friends and Relations (1980), p. 21, quoting the epitaph verse to "Henry Gournay squire" preserved in connection with Great Ellingham. Also reproduced in the Pease/Pennyghael Gurney genealogy. ↩
  12. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pedigree p. 287. Baptismal date 15 May 1572 from the Pease/Pennyghael genealogy. Married Martha, daughter of Sir Edward Lewknor of Denham, Suffolk. Their son Edward Gournay (b. 1608) succeeded Henry as heir; the line failed in 1661 with his grandson Henry II of West Barsham, who died without issue. ↩
  13. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pedigree p. 287; Pease/Pennyghael Gurney genealogy. ↩
  14. Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 23 (1890), s.v. "Gurney, Edmund (d. 1648)" — Wikisource. Citing Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England (1662), p. 258; Robert Masters, History of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, p. 338 (1831 ed.); Daniel Gurney, Record, pp. 463–7, and Supplement pp. 1011–12; Blomefield, Norfolk, vol. viii, p. 458, and vol. ix, p. 389. Wikipedia article "Edmund Gurney (divine)" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Gurney_(divine). ↩
  15. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pedigree p. 287; Pease/Pennyghael Gurney genealogy, giving the 18 September 1581 birthdate for the Anthony/Francis twins. ↩
  16. See the G14 Francis Gurney fact sheet for the full citation chain. Primary source for the freedom: Merchant Taylors' Company freedom admission, 16 June 1606. ↩
  17. Pease/Pennyghael Gurney genealogy (2016), naming all 13 children. Margaret's marriage to Henry Davy of Great Ellingham, and the descent of Great Ellingham through her daughter Mary to Sir Roger Potts, Bart., is documented in Blomefield, History of Norfolk, vol. i (1805), pp. 482–490 (Great Ellingham). ↩