" Sir Roger, the second of the Essex line, added largely to the estate he had inherited, by his marriage with Anne Tyrrell, daughter of Humphrey Tyrrell, of Warley, and through her mother, Isabel Helion, heiress of Helion, Rolfe, Swynboume, Nortoft, Botetourt, and Genon, the arms of which families were henceforward quartered with Wentworth of Gosfield.

Gosfield which later became the chief seat of the family was part of the inheritance of Lady Wentworth. Sir Eoger, however, does not seem to have resided there, but to have continued at Codham Hall, inherited from his father.

His life was not passed inactively on his great estate; in 1497 he was engaged in the suppression of the Cornish rebels, on which occasion he received his knighthood at Blackheath;

in 1499 he served as Sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire; and in 1520 he is found in attendance on the Queen at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, at Ardres, near Calais.

He died 9th August 1539, and was buried in the church of Wethersfield (not at Gosfield as stated in Morant's Essex), where his lady, the great heiress, who predeceased him in 1534, had been interred. Over their remains a stately altar-tomb was erected, with their recumbent effigies thereon, the knight in armour, his lady in mantle and veil-headdress. This tomb still exists, but during the lapse of three and a half centuries it has suffered considerable mutilation and disturbance, its position having been changed more than once; the inscription whidh on brass ran round the verge of the upper slab is gone, but fortunately four of ten emblazoned shields remain, and the impalement of Tyrrell with Wentworth quartering Howard, indubitably proved the tomb to be that of Sir Eoger and of his lady, Anne Tyrrell.

The preservation of the identity of the tomb by its heraldy is a matter of much satisfaction; nevertheless, misstatements have been made in regard to the monument which would have been avoided had sufficient attention been given to its heraldic record. Goughh Monuments (V. 2. pt. 3), has a description of the tomb, and fortunately (though not wholly accurate), of the quarterings of the ten shields, which appear to have been complete in 1796, the date of the book, without indeed their description was taken from an older account. Gough however, states thie tomb to be that of Henry Wentworth, progenitor of the Essex Wentworths, (who probably was here buried) and yet in the index of his work it is attributed rightly to Sir Roger, son of Henry. "

" Sir Eoger Wentworth left four sons; the eldest, John, afterwards knighted, succeeded his father.

The second son was Henry, in right of his wife Agnes Hamond of Mountnessing, about seven miles south-west of Chelmsford; this manor, however, did not remain in Wentworth hands ; for after the death of Henry, his widow having remarried, Mountnessing was held in her right by her second husband, William Wilford.*

Henry is described as of Gosfield as well as of Mountnessing, and it seems probable that he was the first Wentworth who resided at Gosfield ; for the first entry in the parish register referring to the family is the baptism, in 1545, of one of his children, the inference being that the parents were at the time living at Gosfield.

The child must have been bom either shortly before or after Henry's death, for the register records the marriage of Agnes his widow to Wm, Wilford in the year following, which also seems to point to her residence at Gosfield ; and John Wilford, apparently her son, was there baptized in 1547.

Henry Wentworth's burial is not on the Gosfield register, possibly an omission, or he may have been interred at Wetherstield, or at Mountnessing, in which parishes the earlier records have been lost. "

" Sir Roger's third son bore his name ; he resided first at Felsted, where he had land, and was afterwards of Becking manor, purchased from the crown in 1544. He was the first of four generations of Wentworths seated at Booking rather more than a century ; the pedigree of the branch house follows that of the paternal house of Gosfield. "

" The fourth son of Sir Eoger was John Wentworth, junr., who was of Bumpstead, one of the manors in the inheritance of his mother. "

" That Sir John Wentworth, during his father's life, was for some years in the suite of Cardinal Wolsey, is gathered from the Chronicles of Calais edited by the Camden Society in 1846. His name appears in a list of fifty gentlemen who attended the Cardinal at Calais, in 1521; and again in 1527, at the same place, "Mastar Wentforthe" is one of the gentlemen ushers of the great churchman. It was not until 1546, seven years after he had succeeded to the Essex estates, that he was made knight. "

" Two years previously, i.e. in 1544, he had added to the great estate surrounding him the manor of Wethersfield, which he obtained from the Crown in exchange for the distant manor of East Mersea, part of his mother's inheritance, on the sea coast of the county. The Wentworth estate had now reached its climax, and appears to have comprehended in the county of Essex eleven manors surrounding or adjacent to the family seat of Gosfield Hall, and eight manors detached but not far distant from it. "

" There was also the property which had come with Elizabeth Howard, Sir John's grand-mother, three manors in Norfolk, and seven or more in Suffolk. He appears to have changed his residence from Codham Hall to 'Gosfield Hall (the direct distance between the two places is two-and-a-half miles), and it is not improbable that the latter was built, or at least rebuilt by him, although by some the structure has been attributed to au earlier period, in which it may have been the dwelling-place of the predecessors of the Wentworths at Gosfield. It is however certainly known that he built, in 1561, the portion of the parish church which has ever since been called the Wentworth chapel, and which Morant incorrectly attributed to Thomas Rolfe, the founder of the earlier portion of the church, c. 1435. "

" In the Wentworth chapel Sir John was buried in 1567, having reached the age of 73 years; his grey marble altar tomb stands on the north side of the chancel, that is between chancel and chapel ; it is in good preservation, except that as in the case of the older tomb at Wethersfield, the inscribed brass fillet, or nearly all of it, has disappeared. Here again however heraldry has fortunately preserved the record of the dead ; on the sides of the tomb were formerly ten engraved brass shields, three of these remain, and Wentworth, (quarterly of fourteen, impaling Bettenham, clearly indicates that the memorial is that of Sir John Wentworth, knight, who married Anne Bettenham, of an old Kentish family, long seated on a manor still retaining their name, in Pluckley parish, Kent. Lady Wentworth survived her husband eight years, and was buried here in 1575, Their issue had been a son, John, who died before his parents (one of the shields remaining on the tomb, not impaled, and surmounted by an esquire's helmet with the crest of the family, is evidently for him), and two daughters, Mary the first wife of Thomas, second Lord Wentworth of Nettlested (she died at Calais when her lord was Deputy there); and Anne Lady Maltravers, her father's heiress. "

" Lady Maltravers had been twice married and twice widowed before she became Mistress of Gosfield. Her first husband was Sir Hugh Rich, knight, son of Lord Rich of Leeze (Leighs), Essex, Lord Chancellor, and grandfather of Eobert Eich, first Earl of Warwick. The marriage is not in the Gosfield registers, and its date is not ascertained, but Sir Hugh died v. p. in 1554, and was buried in the Wentworth chapel, where is his tomb. "

" Lady Rich did not long remain a widow; her second husband was Henry Fitz Aian, Lord Maltravers, only son and heir apparent, of Henry the last Fitz Alan Earl of Arundel. He must have been a very young bridegroom, and his abilities of remarkably early development, for he was scarcely nineteen when traveUing, it is said, as envoy to Maximilian, king of Bohemia, his promising career was arrested by fevei* at Brussels ; he died 30th June, 1556, and was interred in the Cathedral of St. Gudule.* Lady Maltravers having remained a widow some years, accepted as her third husband William Deane, whoili Morant calls her servant, though from that author's account he appears to have been of gentle blood ; probably he was steward or manager of her estate. Deane was evidently a man of ability, and profited largely by his marriage, though it did not give him a right touching the Wentworth property ; but in 1575 he was sufficiently rich to purchase the manor of Dynes, about three miles from Gosfield, in the parish of Great Maplestead, and to this manor, a few years after the death of Lady Maltravers, he added two others, building a mansion at Dynes, and marrying for his second wife a lady of the family of Egerton. William Deane died in 1585, leaving two sons and a daughter ; John, the elder son, in- herited Dynes Hall and the estate, was knighted in 1603, and became High Sheriff of the county in 1610 ; in Great Maplestead Church, where in 1625 he was buried (as was probably his father), there is a handsome monument to his memory, and one also for his wife, Anne, daughter of Sir Drue Drury, of Co. Suffolk. Dynes Hall continued in the family of Deane until 1652. "

" Queen Elizabeth visited Lady Maltravers in August, J 579 ; Her Majesty was at that time making a circuit of visits among her nobility and gentry, and remained five days at Gosfield, where the memory of her visit has been preserved by the Queen's name attached to the gallery in the remaining old portion of the Hall. This event took place in the year preceding the death of Lady Maltravers ; she died in January, 1580-1, and was buried in the Wentworth chapel with her first husband Sir Hugh Eich. .Their tomb is nearly in the centre of the chapel, it is a low altar-tomb, similar to that of Sir John Wentworth ; the inscription has suffered less than the other though much of it is gone ;- the portion remaining however sufficiently indicates that "Sir Hewe who maryed Anne the dowghter and ayre of Sur John Wentworth, Knight rests here. It is well that the name has beeii spared, for in this case heraldry is silent, the shields, one in the centre of each panel of the tomb, having apparently never been charged. "

" John Wentworth, 6th of his line, was Sheriff of the county of Essex in 1693. He had the estate twenty-five years, but, like his father, did not live to be an old man; he died at the age of forty-nine in 1613, and his burial is on the Gosfield register, though he has no memorial in the church. His only surviving son succeeded him. "

" The seventh and last Wentworth of this line was the fourth Sir John, knighted in 1603 on the accession of James 1., and created a Baronet in 1611. Unfortunately for himself and his family he was of an extravagant disposition, and wasted his splendid inheritance. In 1622, to pay his debts he was driven to sell Gosfield and^ the greater part of the estate, and when he died, in 1631, apparently there were but four manors remaining to be divided between his two surviving daughters ; it seems well that his only son should have died young, and thus have been saved the consequences of his father's recklessness. The baronetcy of course became extinct.
Where Sir John died and where he was buried does not seem to be known. "

" His widow, Catherine, daughter of Sir Moyle Finch, of Eastwell, Kent, survived hm eight years; the manor of Wethersfield had been settled on her for life, and as Moyant records that on her death in 1639 she was buried in Epping church " in a vault under the communion table," (confirmed by the register), it seems probable that she may then have been residing with her daughter Cecily, " Lady Grey, wife of Wm. Lord Grey, of Werke, who had purchased Epping manor from his wife's brother, Thomas Finch, Earl of Winchilsea. The younger daughter of the Baronet was Lucy, second wife of her distant kinsman, Thomas Went- worth. Earl of Cleveland. The remnant of her father's estate which fell to her was the manor of Codham Hall, the earliest possession of the Wentworths of Essex. Catherine her only child by the Earl, inherited the old manor ; she married William Spencer, of Eolands, Cople Parish, Bedford- shire ; and he dying s.p., the manor passed to his nephew, William Spencer, who sold it, since which time it has not been reunited to the Gosfield estate.

Codham Hall, now a farmhouse, retains traces of its former dignity ; portion of a chapel which stood near it, and was used for worship up to sometime in the reign of Elizabeth, remains as a cottage. "

" The Field of the Cloth of Gold (French: Camp du Drap d'Or) was a summit meeting between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France from 7 to 24 June 1520. Held at Balinghem, between Ardres in France and Guînes in the English Pale of Calais, it was a very expensive display of wealth by both kings. "