Notices of the Ellises of England, Scotland, and Ireland, from the conquest to the present time

78—79
does not appear. Philipot, in his ' Villare Cantianum/ 1C59 (p.
263), says, " Stoneacre in this parish [Othara] is an ancient
seat, which for some centuries of years has acknowledged no
other proprietary but Ellys ; but whether Burton in Kenning-
ton, or this mansion, were the original foundation from whence
this family did extract its first etymology is uncertain, for once
they had one and the same possessor. The deeds that fortify
their interest in this place reach as high as the time of Edward
the Second (? III.), and instruct us that Ellys which enjoys it
now, is, by a stream of many uninterrupted descents, issued
out from John Ellis, who possessed it then/''* The same
author (p. 202) thus further speaks of the family : — " Bibrooke
[in Kennington] was granted by Richard II., in the thirteenth
of his reign, to William Ellis, who was at that time one of the
Conservators or Justices of the Peace of this county, whose
capital seat was at Burton in this parish ; though in very old
deeds it is written Burston, as being indeed the seat of a branch
of that family, from whom it came out about the latter end of
Edward II. to Ellys; but in the name of Ellys the title of
Bibrooke was not long-lived, for about the beginning of Henry
VI., I find it by purchase invested in Shelley, by whose heir
general it devolved in the time of Edward IV. to May : but
Burton was more constant to the family of Ellys, and remained
linked to the patrimony of that name, until that age which
bordered on our fathers' remembrance, and then it was de-
mised by sale to Hall, in whose descendant, Mr. Nevill Hall,
the propriety is at present resident/'
The Pedigree of Ellis of Stoneacre, occurs in one only of the
authenticated Visitations of Kent, viz., that of 1663, where
three generations only are given ; this is signed by the then
head of the family, Edmund Ellis : the arms are the cross and
crescents (with the crest of the naked female) ; quartering,
1. Barry, f 2. Sevington,f and 3. (? Stoneacre. f) Its omission
in that of 1574 (containing Ellis of Chislehurst) may be ex-
plained by the same reasons that account for the absence of
many families of importance ; in this case, minority was pro-
bably the cause. Harl. MS. 1548, is a copy of Philipot' s Visita-
tion in 1619, in his own handwriting, and contains a full
pedigree of the family, compiled with much research ; but it
does not appear in the original record at the College of Arms,
though clearly intended for insertion. This is the basis of the
following pedigree of the family, though, as tested by wills, it
* This J^ohn Elys is evidently the John Stonaker of the Subsidy Eoll 21 Edw.
III. (see ^76), and probably the Commissioner of Sewers of 1326 (see p. 228).
f Barry bore, arg., afess gules between six fleur-de-lis sable ; Sevington, arg.,
on afess wavy sa. three escallops or between three trefoils slipped of the second,
whose heiress Barry married ; the third quartering, supposed of Stoneacre (vide
post), ought to have been first.