Mynors Papers

With very few exceptions, the documents arrived as separate pieces, with no natural archive groups. They have been sorted by the properties involved, usually in chronological order, leases-off, mortgages, etc., being included with the deeds. Separate plots in the same field or street have been grouped together.

Deposited by Mr. Mynors of Great Haywood

The Mynors were an ancient East Staffordshire family, of Blakenhall (Barton under Neadwood). A branch descended from John Mynors, ca 1370/80 settled in the town of Uttoxeter, and a branch of this family, descended from Nicholas Mynors, early 16th century, is the branch which survived, and to which the documents in this collection relate. Thus, the deeds in this collection relate to properties acquired by the Mynors from the mid-sixteenth century. Earlier deeds survive for some of the properties. The family home, Hollingbury Hall, was apparently acquired by the purchase in 1558/59 of the inheritance of the daughters and co-heiresses of William Dymocke. There are earlier deeds showing the acquisition of part of the land by the Dymockes. The purchaser, Ralph Mynors, was a citizen and draper of London, who had presumably returned to Uttoxeter by 1566, when he purchased Stramshall Hall from William Michell. In this case, also, there are a few earlier deeds. In the late seventeenth century, the family acquired one twelfth of the manor, and in 1707/8 a further twelfth. In the eighteenth century the estates were heavily mortgaged. In addition, the family held various properties in and around Uttexeter, and also in Stubby Lane, and Marchington Woodlands (Par. Hanbury) Ellastone, Cheadle, Rocester and elsewhere. There are virtually no records in this deposit which illustrate the administration of the estate.

A number of apprenticeship indentures survive. Their survival appears to have been from a variety of reasons: three apprentices were helped by money from the wills of members of the family, two indentures apparently relate to pauper children being apprenticed when William Towers, (perhaps maternal grandfather of William Towers Mynors, who succeeded to the family property in 1758), was churchwarden of Hanbury: one was the apprenticeship of a member of the Mynors family.

The family pedigree, together with a considerable amount of family history, is given in a collection in Stafford Record Office (128).