Royden’s “Three Roydon Families” - An Outline

While E B Royden, the author, covered three entirely separate families, I have chosen to cover only first the first of these which just happens to be the one from which we are descended. This family started in the village of Roydon in Suffolk, continued at Royden Hall, near Ramsey, Essex and ended at Roydon Hall, East Peckham, Kent. In each case the senior male line died out but a junior line was found to be carrying on elsewhere. The first line ended totally extinct in both males and females but with the last descendant being the young Humphrey, earl of Lincoln who died aged 10 in 1438. He was related to the earls of Wiltshire and to some Staffords who managed, incorrectly, to get hold of the Suffolk Royden property. However it seems that some junior and distant Bures relatives, but not Roydons, managed to recover this property after some forty years, in about 1500.

The second Roydon line struggled to survive at Roydon Hall, Essex but they seemed to get into debt too much and around 1450 the last male died, so that estate passed out of Roydon hands though into the new family of the Roydon heiress.

The final line started with some mystery in that this junior Roydon appeared in Kent from Essex, but as a very rich man. He called his East Peckham, Kent house Fortune to reflect his good fortune but how he came by it we have no idea. He appeared to be founding a dynasty with two sons and five daughters; but his eldest son was convicted of murder and hanged, his second son had no children and the estates were divided among his five daughters and their children. The middle daughter Elizabeth then made it her business to buy out her sisters and bequeathed a very handsome estate to her only son, William Twysden, or Twysenden as some documents called him. She also provided for her only surviving daughter Margaret, some of whose descendants emigrated to the New World.