Protestant Exiles from France/Book First - Chapter 9 - Section V
V. De La Forterye.
In my Chapter I. I mentioned the first De la Forterye, a native of Lille, refugee in Canterbury in 1567, and his son, Nicolas,[1] merchant in London. I also noted a refugee in London, who was a native or had been an inhabitant of Thiel until 1567, when he arrived among us, namely, Nicolas Furtrye, with a daughter, Margaret, and a son, Samuel. From the Christian names of the two families I conclude that they were nearly related; but I believe that the English refugee family sprang from the Canterbury refugee John, and from his son Nicolas, and from his grandsons (sons of Nicolas) John, Samuel, and Peter, who anglicised their surname into Fortrye.
(1.) John Fortyre married, first, Anne, daughter of Jean de Francqueville and Anne Le Maire, and secondly, Marie Biscop. In 1633 we find mention of his three sons, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and three daughters, Mary, Sarah, and Jane. In that year, Abraham, merchant of Aldgate Ward, was the head of a family, his wife’s maiden name being Jane Vandeput, and had a daughter, Jane, and two sons, John (aged about three years), and Abraham (aged about eight months); but after 1633 this family disappear from view, and we have no record of the marriages or deaths of Isaac and Jacob. Turning to their sisters, we find that Mary was the wife of Solomon Goris, and Sarah seems to have been unmarried. Jane we have already met with as the wife of John Lethieullier. So that her representatives also represent John Fortrye, namely, the descendants of Sir Edward Hulse, Baronet (who died in 1816).
(2.) Samuel Fortrye was in 1634 a merchant in London of Walbrooke Ward; his wife was Katherine, daughter of John de Latfleur of Henault. In that year their son Samuel was twelve years old, and there were two daughters, Katherine and Mary. But I know nothing about them, except that genealogists say that the male line survived for a time in Leicester, and that it is collaterally represented in the English peerage.
(3.) Peter Fortrye[2] was a merchant of London in Aldgate Ward in 1633, and married, about 1600, Lea, daughter of Laurence Des Bouverie. He was styled Peter De la Forteri, or Fortrye, of London, and of East Combe, Kent. I have not the date of his death, but his wife died in 1659. He had one son and heir, James, and a daughter, Lea (who died in 1678), wife of Edward Adye of Barham; (also, another daughter, Susanna, Mrs. Bulteel, of whom I shall speak when I come to her husband’s family). James became James Fortrye, Esq., of Wombwell Hall, Northfleet; he married Mary, daughter of Edward Allanson, of Bromley; he died in 1674, the father of the next squire of Wombwell Hall. The above-mentioned Mrs. Adye had a daughter, Rosamond, wife of George Elcock, of Barham, Esq., and was the mother of Rosamond Elcock. The second James Fortrye married, first, Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Seymour of Woodlands, Dorset (who died 1st January 1715), and secondly, his fascinating cousin Rosamond. He died in 1727, leaving one son, James. This third James Fortrye, of Wombwell Hall, married Ursula, daughter of Captain Robert Chadwick, R.N., but died childless in 1744. Mrs Adye (née Lea Fortrye) had a son, James, born in 1663, but he left no heir. She had seven married daughters (1) Mary, wife of John Wilkinson, of Shelve, Esq.; (2) Lea, Mrs. Boys; (3) Anne, Mrs. Marsh, of Nethersole; (4) Susanna, wife of Ruishe Wentworth, Esq., a nephew of one of the earls of Strafford; (5) Rosamond, wife of George Elcock, Esq.; (6) Elizabeth, married in 1734 to William Hugessen, of Provender, Esq.; (7) Dorothy, wife of Henry Eve, of Canterbury, Esq. The representatives of the De la Forterye refugee descend from Mrs. Wentworth. Her daughter and heir, Mary, named after her grandmother Fortrye, was the wife of Thomas, sixth Baron Howard of Effingham, who died 10th July 1725, without male heirs; but there were two daughters and co-heirs, Anne and Mary. The Hon. Anne Howard was married to Sir William Yonge, fourth baronet of Escott (a baronetcy now extinct). The Hon. Mary Howard, was married in June 1733, to George Venables Vernon, Esq., of Sudbury; she had a son, George, born 9th May 1735, and a daughter, Mary, but died in February 1740. Mr. Vernon was raised to the peerage in 1762 as Lord Vernon, and the above-named George became the second Lord Vernon in 1807, and died 18th June 1815, aged eighty. He had no sons, so that the barony devolved on his half-brother, the second wife of the Hon. Mary Howard’s husband. But the second Lord Vernon did not leave the De la Forteryes unrepresented. For, in the first place, he himself by his wife Georgiana, daughter of William Fauquier, Esq. (whom he had married on 25th May 1786), left a daughter, Georgiana, who had been married on 19th September 1809, to Edward, third Lord Suffield, and was the mother of Edward Vernon Harbord, fourth Lord Suffield (she died 30th September 1824). And in the second place, as to the second Lord Vernon, his sister, Hon. Mary Venables Vernon, was married in 1763 to George Adams, Esq., who, in 1773, assumed the name of Anson; she was the mother of Thomas, first Viscount Anson (so created 17th February 1806), and the grandmother of Thomas, first Earl of Lichfield (so created 15th September 1831). She was the mother of eight sons and three daughters, and thus all the Anson family represent the De la Forterye refugee; this was doubly the fact in the case of the late George Edward Anson, Esq., C.B. (born 1812, died 1849), Keeper of the Privy Purse to Her Majesty, Treasurer of the Household, and Cofferer to H.R.H. the Prince Consort, who married Georgiana May, daughter of the third Lord Suffield by Hon. Georgiana Venables Vernon. Mrs. Anson left an only daughter, Mary, who was married in 1877 to Rev. R. Digby Ram. [Mrs. Anson remarried in 1865 with Charles Edward Boothby, Esq. of New Lodge, Burton-on-Trent, J.P., a grandson of Major Sir William Boothby, Baronet.]