Thrale/Thrall history

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All the early Thrale entries in the Sandridge Parish Church Registers (Bishops Transcript, Hertford Transcript, Steele MSS, Sandridge Typescript) are easily identified except for Francis Thrale and a Nicholas Thrale, gentleman, who died in 1597. The register tells us that these two men were brothers. Francis Thrale had six children baptised between 1586 and 1592 one of whom was Petronelle who was baptised in 1588, and Francis in 1587. It is apparent that these members of the family had come to Sandridge to join their kinsmen in Sandridge and then moved away again. Nicholas is a rarely used name in the Thrale family and it is intriguing to remark the sad baptism and burial record in the one year of 1601 of Edward, son of Nicholas Thrale, at Clophill, which is, of course, in the Hundred of Flitt!

Francis Thrale the younger was also connected with Bedfordshire for he was deponent concerning a lease of land apparently in Gifford, parish of Sandy in Bedfordshire. 'Francis Thrale of Westminster, Middx, gentleman, aged 37, sworn 15 May 1626, says he knew the parties concerned'.¹⁴ Likewise two years later he was of St. Andrew, Holborn, London, gentleman, 'aged about 40, sworn 1628 deposed to knowing nothing about £600 given by the late Countess of Sussex to the defendant Thomas Mewtys Esq.'¹⁵ The sister of Francis Thrale, Petronelle Thrale, 'otherwise called for Brevities sake Ellienor or Nell Thrale' - did she sell oranges? - of St. Nicholas Acons, London, Spinster, aged about 40, sworn 1634, said she had been servant to Mrs. Woodrow for six years and before that to Sir Martin Lumley for two years'.¹⁶ With such migration from Thrales End and Sandridge to London, it is most surprising that there are not more Thrales living in London at the present time, for it still remains a name of comparative rarity.

Other families involved in the Dissolution of the Monastery were the Gapes, descended from former officials at the Monastery, who then resided at St. Michael's Manor in Fishpool Street for generations, providing sixteen Mayors of St. Albans. Sir Richard Lee, a renowned soldier and engineer in the Scottish and French wars, and defender of Boulogne, took over Sopwell Nunnery which he re-named Lee's Place, and the Manor of Newland Squillers which occupied most of central St. Albans. In wishing to create a private park on what is now the Verulam golf course, he calmly diverted the old main road of Shenley Lane into the road now called Old London Road. His daughter married a Pemberton, the family which founded the still extant almshouses in the Bowgate, by the bus garage in Upper St. Peter's Street.

Footnotes

14. Bernau's Index (18) C24/522.↩︎
15. Ibid (19) C24/541.↩︎
16. Ibid (20) C24/596.↩︎