10 Jul Lordship Title of Creakers or Crewkers or Westende ID1070
Posted at 20:00h
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The manor of CREAKERS, CREWKERS or WESTENDE derives its name from the Kentish family of de Crevequer or de Crewker. The alternative name of this manor originates from its position in the north-west of the parish. It was a younger line of the Crevequer family that came into Bedfordshire in the 13th century. Barford was probably acquired by marriage, for James de Crevequer, who is mentioned as holding 2 hides between 1250 and 1270 in Great Barford, had married Matilda the daughter and coheir of Sir John de Bovil, who was proved to hold estates in this county in 1225. James died before 1263, and Robert, his eldest son and heir, may have succeeded to the property for a short time, buthe died about the same time as his father, and was succeeded by his youngest brother James. The latter held the family property in 1302–3, and by 1316 it had passed to his son Stephen de Crevequer and Anne his wife, who was still holding it in 1330. John, probably the son of Stephen and Anne, was seised of the fee, which James de Crevequer had once held, sixteen years later, and upon his death without issue in 1370 Stephen the son of his brother Geoffrey succeeded to the property. Stephen died while under age in the same year, when it descended to his younger brother, John Crevequer, who entered into possession of what is now for the first time called the manor on the attainment of his majority in 1385. The manor was held in 1428 by Stephen Crevequer, and, although he is not mentioned as actually holding Creakers at a subsequent date, his name is given in the list of Bedfordshire gentry for 1433. Six years later he is found in a list of many to whom pardons were granted. John Fitz Jeffrey of Great Barford is also given in the list of 1433, but his family probably did not acquire the manor until later. William Fitz Jeffrey of Thurleigh, the first of this name to hold Creakers, left by his first wife a son John and a widow Elizabeth, upon whom Blackborne Hall and Milton Ernest were settled in 1511. John died in 1535, leaving 'all lands in Barford, Renhold and Ravensden for a priest to say mass and to sing for my soul for the space of two years.' His widow Joan retained Creakers until her death in 1536, when it passed to George Fitz Jeffrey, the half-brother of John aforesaid, who married as his first wife Jane daughter of John Baptist, by whom he had six sons. His second wife Judith daughter of Richard Throckmorton was alive at his death in 1575 and married three years later John the son of Thomas Rolt of Milton Ernest. George Fitz Jeffrey left a son and heir of the same name, knighted in 1606, to whom his stepmother Judith and her second husband John Rolt transferred their right in the manor in 1589. He was buried here in December 1618. His son George Rolt of Creakers had predeceased him in 1616, and his widow Anna was buried here in 1627. About this date the Fitz Jeffreys disposed of their property by sale and are stated to have left the county. In 1686 David Chandler and Anne his wife quitclaimed a third of the manor to Henry Halsoll and Edward Goodwin. A third part of this portion of the manor was owned in 1726 by Harry Mander, who alienated it in 1738 to John Peck. The Halseys are the next family that are known to have held the manor, and are said to have sold it to Mr. Pedley of Great Barford about 1770. The latter's son William held it in 1801 and still possessed it at the time when Lysons wrote. By 1820 Creakers had ceased to exist as a manor, but the Pedley family to whom it belonged is still resident in this parish.
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Listed in the Domesday Book:
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