Men of Kent and Kentishmen/Mary Honywood
Mary Honywood,
Is, not with out justice, enumerated by Fuller as amongst the "memorable persons" of Kent. Her maiden name was Waters, and she was a native of Lenham. The nature of her claim to remembrance may be learned from the following epitaph to be seen in Markeshall Church, Essex,—
"Here lieth the body of Mary Waters, daughter and co-heir of Robert Waters, of Lenham, Esquire, wife of Robert Honywood, of Charing, Esquire, who had at her decease lawfully descended from her, three hundred and sixty-seven children, sixteen of her own body, one hundred and fourteen grandchildren, two hundred and twenty-eight in the third generation, and nine in the fourth. She lived a most pious life, and in a Christian manner died here at Markeshall, in the ninety-third year of her age, the 11th May, 1620."
"Thus," says Fuller, "she had a child for every day in the year and one over." She was an earnest and energetic Protestant. "In the days of Queen Mary she used to visit the prisons, and comfort and relieve the confessors therein. She was present at the burning of Mr. Bradford, in Smithfield, and resolved to see the end of his suffering, though so great was the presse of the people that her shoes were trodden off, and she forced thereby to go bare-foot from Smithfield to St. Martin's before she could furnish herself with a new pair for her money."
[See "Fuller's Worthies."]