Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

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

Anthony Gurney (G17) Notes

Research notes for g17-anthony-gurney-fact-sheet.md. See .claude/rules/research-files.md for the paired-file rule.

Working Notes

Anthony on the Surrey grand jury: the Letters and Papers indictment text

The contemporary calendar confirms the family tradition that Anthony was foreman of the Norfolk grand jury that indicted Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, for treason. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, vol. 21 part 2, no. 697 (the indictment and trial record, 13 January 1547) lists the sixteen-man Norfolk jury empanelled at Norwich Castle on 7 January 1547 to find the true bill, opening: “Anthony Gurney, William Brampton, John Berney, George Horsman, Ralph Shelton, Edmund Wode, Robert Rugge, William Rogers, Thomas Codde, Robert Lovedaie, Richard Sponer, William Drake, Thomas Aldriche, John Thetford, Thomas Hare and Henry Dengeyn.” Anthony Gurney heads the list — the first-named position that by convention identifies the foreman — corroborating Daniel Gurney’s Supplement claim from the primary calendar; the calendar abstract itself lists the panel without printing the word “foreman,” so the foremanship rests on that first-named convention rather than an explicit designation. The jury places Anthony in the front rank of mid-Tudor Norfolk gentry, returning a treason bill against the Duke of Norfolk’s heir two weeks before Henry VIII’s own death.[1]

Anthony’s will: made 6 December, proved 10 December 1557, Norwich

Anthony Gurney’s will survives in the Norwich wills register, and it is transcribed in full — “I Anthonie Gurney of greater Elingham in the countie of Norff Esquier,” made 6 December 1557, proved at Norwich 10 December 1557. Full transcription at sources/corpus_supplement/ncc-will-1557-anthony-gurney-great-ellingham-transcription.md; page images at sources/media/ncc-will-1557-anthony-gurney-great-ellingham/_local/.[2]

The substance: burial in Great Ellingham church (2s 8d for tithes forgotten); a fourteen-year executor trust — the term reads “forte[n]e” at both occurrences, the will’s hardest repeated word, with forty the alternative reading — over two-thirds of his knight-service manors and all his non-knight-service lands, for debts, legacies, and performance of the will; £200 to “Elizabeth Gurney my dowter” and £20 to “Cicelie Gurney my dowter”; the residue of the trust income to the “educacion and bringing upp of Anthonye Gurney, Thomas Gurney, Elizabeth Gurney, ffrannces Gurney, Anne Gurney and Anthonye Drurye my Grandchildren,” with the overplus at the trust’s end divided among the grandchildren then living; executors Sir Christopher Heydon, knight (Baconsthorpe — the Heydon kinsman), and Robert Notary, esquire; witnesses Anthony [Twayghtes?], Thomas Flegge, John Cadie, and [Fannys?] Smyth; proved before Master Michael Dunning, doctor of laws. The fourteen-year reading carries its own corroboration: a trust running from December 1557 ends in 1571 — almost exactly when the heir Henry (G15, b. c. 1548–50) would come of age to take livery.

Four consequences follow.

  1. Death date — resolved to early December 1557. A will made 6 December and proved 10 December 1557 means Anthony died c. 6–10 December 1557; the will is primary and supersedes Blomefield’s traditional 4 January 1555/6 (vol. vii), which descends from the Blomefield/Parkin compilation. data/ancestors.json now reads “d. early Dec. 1557,” with the daughters Elizabeth and Cicely (below) added there.
  2. Why Henry is absent from the grandchildren — he is the heir at law. The will names no living son: Anthony’s eldest son Francis (G16) had predeceased him (Blomefield, the 1563/89/1613 visitation, and Daniel Gurney all state it; the will’s silence confirms it), so the fourteen-year trust over two-thirds of the knight-service manors is the classic minority-management vehicle for a dead son’s children. Henry (G15), the grandson-and-heir, takes the descended third by law (Statute of Wills, 1540) and so needs no legacy — which is exactly why he is omitted while the five Gurney grandchildren (Anthony, Thomas, Elizabeth, ffrances, Anne) and the Drury grandchild are funded. Setting Henry alongside the five named Gurney grandchildren gives six grandchildren matching Pease’s six-children list for Francis G16 — so the named grandchildren are Henry’s own siblings, and the will independently corroborates the Anthony → Francis → Henry line rather than contradicting it. Full treatment on the G16 companion.
  3. Blomefield’s “grandson Henry, aged twenty-one” reconciled. Blomefield’s parish entry collapses Anthony’s death and Henry’s succession into one sentence — “died January 4, 1555, leaving Henry, his grandson and heir, aged twenty-one years” — impossible against Henry’s 1548/9 birth (he was ~9 in 1557, not 21). The fourteen-year trust resolves it: running from December 1557 it ends in 1571, the year the minor heir Henry (b. 21 Jan 1548/9) turns 21 and takes livery. Blomefield’s “aged twenty-one” is therefore Henry’s livery age, c. 1570, telescoped onto the (also mis-dated) death — not his age at his grandfather’s death. The trust is the wardship instrument bridging the gap. See the G15 companion.
  4. The grandchild “ffrances Gurney” sits in the generation below Anthony’s children, so it is a grandchild named Francis (for his father G16) or Frances — not Francis G16 himself.

The daughters Elizabeth (£200 — a full marriage portion, so probably unmarried in 1557) and Cicely (£20 — probably already settled) are now carried in data/ancestors.json as Anthony’s children; a further daughter married a Drury (mother of the grandchild Anthony Drurye).

TNA Chancery IPM catalogue entries — open, not resolved to Anthony

The National Archives’ Chancery inquisitions post mortem series (C 142) carries two “Gurney, Antony: Norfolk” entries: C 142/106/46 (2&3 Philip & Mary, 1555/6) and C 142/154/67 (12 Elizabeth, 1569/70), read at TNA Discovery catalogue-description level only — the documents themselves have not been pulled. Neither fits Anthony cleanly: an IPM is a death inquisition, but Anthony’s own will (made 6 Dec., proved 10 Dec. 1557, above) fixes his death to late 1557, after the first entry’s 1555/6 date and well before the second’s 1569/70. The catalogue attribution is therefore either a different “Antony Gurney,” a mis-dated or delayed inquiry, or (for the 1569/70 entry) a kinsman — carried here as an open lead, not assigned to this Anthony by name alone.[3]

Two earlier Gurney–Spelman documentary intersections

Two will abstracts in the typescript Norfolk wills abstract volume bear on this family’s network a generation either side of Anthony:

  • 1524 — Antony Gurney executor to Henry Spilman, Esq., of Great Ellingham. The registered will reads in full: “I Henry Spilman esquier … the xvij daie of February [1523/4] … my body to be buried in the chirch yarde of Saynte James in Ellyngham,” with wife Elizabeth taking his movables (cattle, plate, corn in the barn, the year’s sown crop) and a life interest in his lands, manors, and freehold (to be sold by the executors after her death), a 100-mark marriage portion to one Frances, twenty-shilling legacies through a local network (Brampton, Newman, Golding, Pyott, Stykes, and others), and executors “my wyffe, Antony Gurney, and John Turrell,” each given 20s and a black gown; proved at Norwich, April 1524. The “Antony Gurney” reading is secure; no relationship or style is attached to him in the legible text. Crucially, the will names no children — consistent with this being the Henry Spelman/Spilman of “Mickle Elyngham” who died without issue and through whose death (Blomefield dates it 1525) Great Ellingham passed to the Lovells and so, by Anthony’s marriage to Margaret Lovell, to the Gurneys. On that reading Anthony Gurney executed the will of the very man from whom his family inherited Great Ellingham — a personal Gurney–Spelman bond a century before the antiquary Sir Henry Spelman held the manuscript Gurney pedigree, and the documentary join between the executor role and the inheritance. (The 1524-proved vs Blomefield’s 1525 date, and the absence of a stated kinship between Henry Spilman and Antony Gurney, are the remaining open points.) Full transcription: sources/corpus_supplement/paleo-2026-06-packet-12-henry-spillman-great-ellingham-will.md. The typescript abstract volume records it as “HENRY SPILLMAN, Esquier … my wif, Antony Gurney and John Turrell, executors. D: 17 Feb — P. 1524” (register “Cons: Alabaster: 1520-3: 231”).[4]
  • 1475 — William Gurney among the Wymondham of Felbrigg feoffees. The will of John Wymondham [Wyndham] the elder, Esq. (D: 26 April 1475) appoints “Richard Southwell, William Gurney, Edmund Bokenham Esq., Henry Spelman, Roger Townshend, and James Hobart to perform my will” — manors of Felbrigg, Aylmerton, Runton, Tottington, Banningham, Colby, Ingworth, Crownthorpe, Wicklewood. A William Gurney (the G18/G19 generation) standing with Southwell, Spelman, Townshend, and Hobart — the working core of the late-Yorkist/early-Tudor Norfolk establishment — is a status datum for the West Barsham line and a second early Gurney–Spelman pairing.[5]

Anthony’s manor of Larling, settled by feoffment in 1532

Anthony held the manor of Larling (Lerling), in the hundred of Shropham a few miles south-west of Great Ellingham, and settled it by feoffment in 1532: Blomefield’s Larling descent records that “In 1532, Anthony Gurnay, Esq. settled the manor on John Tirrell, Esq. and others,” in the same years that the Heydons (Sir John Heydon and Catherine his wife, and Sir Christopher Heydon) were dealing with holdings in the parish.[6] The act is a documented Gurney landholding fifteen years before the Surrey grand jury and a quarter-century before Anthony’s own will, and it names the same John Tirrell/Turrell who served beside Anthony as co-executor of Henry Spilman’s 1524 Great Ellingham will (above) — a recurring associate across Anthony’s early-Tudor Shropham-hundred dealings. The feoffment-to-uses form (settling the manor on Tirrell “and others”) is the ordinary conveyancing device of the period, so Larling remained in the family’s disposition rather than being alienated; Blomefield’s own Larling narrative shows the manor moving through the local Heydon/Groose orbit across 1453–1532.[6]

Visitation of Norfolk corroboration

The Heralds’ Visitations of Norfolk, 1563/1589/1613 (Harleian Society vol. 32, p. 141) head the West Barsham Gurney pedigree with Anthony Gurney, father of Francis of West Barsham (G16, m. Ellen Holdich of Ranworth) and ancestor of Henry of Great Ellingham (G15) — an additional heraldic witness placing Anthony at the head of the recorded Tudor descent. The visitation does not repeat his Margaret Lovell marriage or his death in 1555/6 (Blomefield supplies those).[7]

Research Appendix

Lineage Status

Confirmed by multiple independent sources. Anthony Gurney is unusually well documented for an early-Tudor Norfolk gentleman:

  • Francis Blomefield, History of Norfolk, vol. i (1805), pp. 482–490 (Great Ellingham); vol. vii (1807), pp. 42–47 (West Barsham). Independent confirmation of his marriage to Margaret Lovell, his lordship in 1514, his Lovell-Spelman manorial inheritance in 1525, his death on 4 January 1555/6, and his grandson Henry’s succession.
  • Daniel Gurney (1832), “Extracts from the Household and Privy Purse Accounts of the Lestranges of Hunstanton,” Archaeologia vol. 25, pp. 411–569 — page 528 note i. Independent contemporary documentation of Anthony among the early Tudor Norfolk gentry network.
  • Daniel Gurney, Record of the House of Gournay (1848), pedigree p. 287, and Supplement (1858), pp. 870 ff.
  • Pease/Pennyghael Gurney genealogy (2016).
  • State Papers of Henry VIII, January 1546/7, for the Earl of Surrey grand jury foreman role.
  • Modern Surrey biographical literature, especially W. A. Sessions, Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey: A Life (1999).

Friction with the project JSON — for review

  1. Death date — resolved. Superseded by Anthony’s own will (made 6 Dec., proved 10 Dec. 1557): he died early December 1557, not 4 January 1555/6 (Blomefield) or “December 1556” (the former JSON value). data/ancestors.json now reads “b. c. 1499 — d. early Dec. 1557.” See the will entry and reconciliation in Working Notes above.

  2. Spelling. The JSON uses “Anthony de Gournay” — but Blomefield’s printer uses “Anthony Gourney” / “Anthony Gournay” (without the “de”), and Daniel Gurney uses “Anthony Gurnay.” By the 16th century the “de” particle was dropped from English usage. Recommend updating to “Anthony Gurney.”

  3. Birth year. The JSON gives “c. 1499.” Pease/Pennyghael gives “1491.” Both are estimates. The c. 1499 reading is more consistent with the documented facts (boy lord c. 1508; first marriage c. 1519; eldest son Francis c. 1521).

The Lovell, Conyers, and Spelman connection

Per Blomefield, History of Norfolk, vol. i (1805), pp. 482–490, the descent of Great Ellingham manor was:

“this manor went to Anthony Gourney, Esq. of North Barsham, in right of Margaret his wife, one of the daughters and coheirs of Sir Robert Lovell, by Ela Conyers his wife, who was sister to Anne Coniers, mother of [the antiquary Sir Henry] Spelman” of Congham.

This means:

  • Margaret Lovell = daughter of Sir Robert Lovell + Ela Conyers
  • Sir Robert Lovell = “cousin and coheir of Sir Thomas Lovell, privy counsellor to King Henry VII and Henry VIII and Knight of the Garter” (Blomefield, vol. vii)
  • Sir Thomas Lovell KG (c. 1449–1524) = one of the most powerful men in early Tudor England, Treasurer of the Household to Henry VII and Henry VIII, Speaker of the Commons in 1485
  • Ela Conyers = sister of Anne Conyers, mother of Sir Henry Spelman (1564–1641), the famous English legal antiquary

This makes Anthony’s children first cousins once removed of the antiquary Sir Henry Spelman — a connection that is independently documented by Blomefield and is independent of Daniel Gurney’s pedigree. Anthony’s grandson Henry Gurney (G15), the Elizabethan poet of the commonplace book, was therefore Sir Henry Spelman’s cousin in the second degree. Both men were keepers of personal manuscript collections, both were Norfolk gentlemen of Tudor-Stuart sensibility, and both lived through the same religious and intellectual moment. There is no surviving evidence that they corresponded — but it is plausible they would have known of each other.

The Earl of Surrey grand jury foreman role

The 7 January 1546/7 indictment of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, is one of the great state trials of the late Henrician period. Daniel Gurney’s Supplement (1858) cites the State Papers in identifying “Anthony Gourney, Esq.” as the foreman of the Norfolk grand jury that returned the true bill. The substantive treason charge against Surrey related to his alleged quartering of the royal arms — a charge of pretension to royal blood — and the trial was driven by the Seymour faction at court who feared the rising power of the Howard interest in the king’s last weeks.

The Norfolk grand jury would have been drawn from the leading county gentry, and the foreman would have been by convention one of the senior gentlemen of the county. That Anthony Gurney sat in this role places him in the front rank of mid-Tudor Norfolk gentry — and the political weight of returning a treason indictment against the Duke of Norfolk’s son and heir, two weeks before the king’s own death, is hard to overstate. It would also have ended any prospect of continued Howard patronage of the Norfolk Gurneys for the rest of the 16th century.

The Letters and Papers indictment text has now been consulted (vol. 21 part 2, no. 697); it lists Anthony first among the sixteen Norfolk jurors — see the Working Notes entry above. The fuller setting remains in the State Papers (Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, vol. 21 part 2, December 1546 – January 1547). Modern Surrey biographies (W. A. Sessions 1999; Susan Brigden 2012) should also be checked for any mention of the Norfolk grand jury membership.

Sources Consulted

Primary topographical:

  • 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. Available via British History Online.
  • 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. Available via British History Online.

Primary documentary:

  • Daniel Gurney, “Extracts from the Household and Privy Purse Accounts of the Lestranges of Hunstanton, from A.D. 1519 to A.D. 1578,” Archaeologia vol. 25 (1832), pp. 411–569, especially p. 528 note i. Cambridge Core.
  • Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, vol. 21 part 2 (London: HMSO, 1910), entries for January 1546/7 — for the Earl of Surrey indictment. Not directly consulted; flagged as a research priority.

Genealogical and biographical:

  • Daniel Gurney, The Record of the House of Gournay (London, 1848), pedigree p. 287, and Supplement to the Record of the House of Gournay (King’s Lynn: Thew & Son, 1858), pp. 870 ff. Both digitised on the Internet Archive.
  • Pease/Pennyghael Gurney genealogy (Charles E. G. Pease, 2016), Gurney.pdf.
  • W. A. Sessions, Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
  • Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) — for the Heydon-Boleyn cousinage.
  • Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, s.v. “Lovell, Sir Thomas (c. 1449–1524),” and s.v. “Spelman, Sir Henry (1563/4–1641).”

Negative Results

  • No portrait of Anthony is known to survive.
  • No will of Anthony in the Norwich Consistory Court registers has yet been located. Found 2026-06-10/11 — will made 6 Dec. 1557, proved Norwich 10 Dec. 1557; see the will entry in Working Notes above.
  • No surviving funeral monument is recorded.
  • The Letters and Papers of Henry VIII have not been directly consulted for the January 1547 grand jury foreman role. Consulted 2026-06-13 — vol. 21 pt 2, no. 697 lists Anthony Gurney first among the sixteen-man Norfolk grand jury; see Working Notes.

Open Questions for Future Research

  1. State Papers / Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII vol. 21 part 2 — RESOLVED 2026-06-13 — no. 697 lists the sixteen-man Norfolk jury (Anthony Gurney first); see Working Notes. Remaining: modern Surrey biographies (Sessions 1999; Brigden 2012) for any narrative on the jury’s selection.
  2. Norwich Consistory Court probate registers — resolved. Anthony’s will found and transcribed (made 6 Dec. 1557, proved 10 Dec. 1557); see Working Notes. Remaining sub-questions: reconcile the December 1557 death with Blomefield’s 4 January 1555/6; identify the grandchildren (whose children?) and the absent Henry G15; identify Robert Notary, esquire.
  3. The Lestrange of Hunstanton archive at the Norfolk Record Office — additional unpublished references to Anthony in the 1519–1578 accounts beyond what Daniel Gurney printed in Archaeologia.
  4. Sir Henry Spelman’s surviving correspondence at the Bodleian and the British Library — any reference to his Gurney cousins?
  5. W. A. Sessions’s full Surrey biography for any mention of the Norfolk grand jury composition.

Potential Hero Images

  • St James the Apostle, Great Ellingham (current draft pick) — the parish church of the manor that came into the family by Anthony’s marriage.
  • Baconsthorpe Castle — Anthony’s Heydon maternal grandfather’s seat, English Heritage site, ruined but visitable.
  • West Barsham Hall surviving 16th-century north wing — Anthony’s principal seat.
  • A portrait of Sir Thomas Lovell KG — from the modern ODNB or from a National Portrait Gallery image of his tomb effigy at Holywell, would visually anchor the Lovell-coheir connection.

  1. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, vol. 21 part 2 (London: HMSO, 1910), no. 697 (indictment and trial of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, 13 Jan. 1547; Norfolk jury panel, m. 14), British History Online, www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol21/no2/pp362-378. The jury opens “Anthony Gurney, William Brampton, John Berney …”; Anthony first-named (foreman by convention). Source ID: letters-papers-henry-viii. ↩︎

  2. Will of Anthony Gurney of Great Ellingham, Esq., 6 Dec. 1557, proved Norwich 10 Dec. 1557; Norwich wills register (FamilySearch film 008076312), images 145 ff., ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSND-MSDX-K and ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSND-MSDH-G (probate at register p. 137). Expert paleographic transcription 2026-06-11 from the full-resolution images; full text in the corpus supplement linked in the body. Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎

  3. The National Archives (Kew), Chancery inquisitions post mortem, Series II (C 142): C 142/106/46 (“Gurney, Antony: Norfolk,” 2&3 Ph&M) and C 142/154/67 (“Gurney, Antony: Norfolk,” 12 Eliz.); consulted via TNA Discovery at catalogue-description level, 2026-07-01. Catalogue read in sources/validations/tna-ward-c142-west-barsham-gurney-inquisitions.md. Source ID: tna-ward-c142-west-barsham-gurney-inquisitions. ↩︎

  4. Norfolk wills abstract volume (“Norfolk. Wills 1370–1763,” typescript abstracts), FamilySearch film 008480295, image 149, ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C39V-K2VN, abstract of Henry Spillman, Esq., D: 17 Feb., P. 1524, citing register “Cons: Alabaster: 1520-3: 231.” Flagged by Allen 2026-06-10 (lead L-101). Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎

  5. Same abstract volume, image 806, ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C39V-KLFM, abstract of John Wymondham the elder, Esq., D: 26 April 1475. Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎

  6. Francis Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, vol. 1 (London: William Miller, 1805), “Hundred of Shropham: Lerling,” pp. 428–432, British History Online, www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-hist-norfolk/vol1/pp428-432: “In 1532, Anthony Gurnay, Esq. settled the manor on John Tirrell, Esq. and others, and the same year John Heydon, Knt. and Catherine his wife, and Christopher Heydon, Knt. …” Source ID: blomefield-norfolk. ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. Walter Rye, ed., The Visitations of Norfolk, 1563, 1589 and 1613 (Harleian Society, vol. 32, 1891), p. 141; Internet Archive visitacionievisi32ryew. Source ID: visitations-norfolk-harleian-32. ↩︎