Belchamp Walter - The Wentworth Years
1498-1611

Subsequent to the Helion Years (1459-1491) the Belchamp Estate ended up in the hands of the Wentworths. From my research the marriages of a Helion to a Rolfe and then a marriages of two Rolfe daughters to the Mongomery and Tyrell families resulting in the estate being in Wentworth hands.

In many respects this period is one of the most interesting to me. The time-span covering these years has not been documented that well and it is difficult to follow all of the families that have been involved with the development of events at Belchamp Walter. While it is well known that the Belchamp Estate ended up in the hands of a branch of the Wentworth family, and I say branch as there seem to be many, how this occured is far from simple. In addition to all the intermarriages there was a lot going on politically in the country. The the influence of the Tudors and the build-up to the Civil War meant that many estates changed hands.

I have made many attempts to make sense of this period. Merely taking a list of names and dates from Thomas Wright has led to a little confusion.

Douglas Richardson

Many of the references on the WikiTree pages are to Douglas Richardson's Plantagenet Ancestry and his other contemporary works. I will have to look more closely at Richards text to confirm his sources.