Genealogy of the Olmsted family in America : embracing the ...

Introduction ix
by the Olmsteds more than two hundred years before the Puritan emigration.
After that period I found nothing of them in England.
I have given this account because the incident is so characteristic of an
American's visit to England, as well as because it shows what an historic
interest may attach to any old farmhouse in England.
EXTRACT FROM MORANT'S HISTORY OF ESSEX, VOL. II.
P. 532. Froswell half-hundred.
Olmsted Hall stands in the most northern part of the Parish of Bumsted-
Helion near Castle Camps and Ashdon (Cambridgeshire) in which two parishes
the lands belonging to it do chiefly lie . . . the house is very ancient and
moated round; it was originally of the De Veres lordship of Bumsted Hall
and was holden under them by the Olmsteds, namely, by Martin de Olmestede
who gave lands to the fraternity of the Knights Templar at Little Maplestead
(a Feodar: Com: Oxon). Maurice de Olmestede held it in 28th Henry
III. (1242). William, his son, temp: Edward I., and John de Olmestede 4th
Edward II., (1311) leaving it to his son and heir, William.
P. 70. It belonged afterward to William Skrene (of Writtle and Clifford's
Inn) constituted Sergeant-at-law 10th Henry V. (1410). His descendant,
Sir John Skrene, died in 1471. The heir of Sir John Skrene was John
Clark who descended from Catherine, sister to William Skrene. In 1474 John
Cornyshe, Wm. Dayton and Thomas Garthe released to William, Lord
Hastings, all those manors which were lately the estate of Sir John Skrene.
Lord Hastings was beheaded and his property confiscated in 1480, about
which time Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV., was endowing, as
second Patroness, Queen's College, Cambridge.*
Pp. 278-9. Edward, Lord Windsor, had in right of his wife, Catherine
(daughter of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford by his 1st wife, Dorothy) a
moiety of the manors of Horsdens, Caxton and Pentlow, which he sold 17 Nov.,
1564, to Edward Felton, of Pentlow Hall, Esq., who, the next year, 1st June,
1565, sold it to John Holmested of Bumsted-Helion, Esq., who also purchased
28th Nov., or 10th Dec, 1571, the other moiety of John Scudamore, Esq. On
the 4th April, 1575, John Holmested sold the manor of Dynes to Wm. Deane,
Esq., and the manors of Horsdens and Caxton to William Alston. And
Peter Palmer by deed dated 10th Dec, 1583, confirmed all knight's fee, etc.,
to Edward, son of William Alston, Esq.
P. 256. John Holmested or Olmested, Esq., bought for £1120 the site
and Mansion House of Stansted Hall, 12th Oct., 1576.
This John Holmested was of an ancient family of Olmsted Hall. He
was Master of the Horse to the Earl of Oxford at Castle Hedingham. His
daughter Agnes brought this estate in marriage to Thomas French of Halsted,
who lived at Stansted Hall.
Another portion of the Manor of Stansted Hall, Halsted, County Essex,
was in the hands of Sir William Waldegrave,t of Smallbridge, County Sussex,
28th Oct., 1566.
*When Bishop Niles of New Hampshire (whose wife was an Olmsted of Hartford)
was visiting the then Bursar of the College, he was told that the vegetables on the
dinner table came from Olmsted Hall.
tSon-in-law of John Holmested.