The late 15th and early 16th centuries
9 June 2026 - Added short-cut bar and linked to Thomas Rolfe page. The Edith (Editha) co-heiress of Gosfield hall. Thomas Montgomery and marriage to Phillipa Helion - Wright seems to get a bit confused here.
The Montgomery-Rolfe-Wentworth connections.
John Helion, Esq. was their son and heir, who, dying in
1450, left, by his wife Editha, daughter and co heiress of Thomas Rolfe, Esq. of Gosfield, Philippa, married to Sir Thomas Montgomery, Esq. of Faulkbourne Hall; and Isabel, the wife of Humphrey Tyrell, Esq. of Little Warley, to whom she bore an only daughter, named Anne, who, by marriage, conveyed this and other great estates to Sir Roger Wentworth, of Codham Hall, in Wethersfield.
The Rolfe-Green connection comes from Wikitree so I am a little perpexed until I can find another cross-reference.
I have been getting hits on my page on Humphrey Tyrell - this could indicate an interest somewhere - in any case the link to this page needs to be strengthend.
23 Sept 2026 - Having seen a visit to my page on Radwinter I noticed that I had a link to a geneological website that had a reference to Edith Green. This was alos after a Heritage opne day at the church where I was telling people on my church tour that there was a distinct lack of information on the Belchamp Walter area for the period of the 15th Century and before the Raymonds were residents of Belchamp Hall.
Belchamp Walter the Rolfe-Green years - The late 15th Century - 16th Century
The history of Belchamp Walter over the period of the 15th and 16th centuries is not well recorded. The Helion years of the late 14th and marriage of a Helion to a Tyrell in the 15th could fill in this gap.
The connection to manor houses in the Gosfield area, Codham Hall and Gosfield Hall, was hinted by Thomas Wright in his history of Essex, but like so many of his accounts there is little more than a list of names and dates.
Thomas Wright
The quote below is from Thomas Wright's History of Essex:
John Helion, Esq. was their son and heir, who, dying in 1450, left,
by his wife Editha, daughter and co heiress of Thomas Rolfe, Esq.
of Gosfield, Philippa, married to Sir Thomas Montgomery, Esq. of Faulkbourne Hall; and Isabel, the wife of Humphrey Tyrell, Esq. of Little Warley, to whom she bore an only daughter, named Anne, who, by marriage, conveyed this and other great estates to Sir Roger Wentworth, of Codham Hall, in Wethersfield.
Wright has a date of 1450 for the death of John Helion, which agrees with other research. He also has many other family names tbat it would be safe to assume are connected to the villages history.
We do know from more contemporary accounts that the Belchamp Estate ended up in the Wentworth family in the 16th century, 1539
(British History Online and Historic England)
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What I have done on earlier pages is to take Thomas Wright's text and tried to make some logical sense out of it.
I have taken the family names and tried to cross-reference them back to my research.
Isabel (Helion) Tyrrell (abt. 1447)
Aged 3 in 1450. 1st wife of Humphrey Tyrrell[1] Co-heiress of her father. Descendant of Henry II.
Many of the references on the Wikitree profile for Isabel are from Douglas Richardson's Magna Carta Ancestry.
Interpretation of Thomas Wright's text
Wright is referring to Belchamp Walter but the text in isolation does not link the family names to the village. Little is confirmed about who the residents of the manor in the 15th and 16th centuries.
