The Munsons of Texas — an American Saga

Chapter Two

THE MONSONS OF ENGLAND AND THE MONSENS OF DENMARK
1100-present [1]

SUMMARY
On both sides of the Atlantic, it has been the firm belief of all researchers on the subject that the Munsons of the United States are descended from the Monsons (pronounced "Munsons") of England. One such researcher suggests that the Monsons of England came from the Monsens of Denmark. The detailed genealogy of these families is not known, but Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage of the British Empire records five centuries of the descendants of one family of Monsons of England. The participation of some of the more interesting members of this family in important events in English history is reviewed.


The English Monsons have a recognized history extending through six centuries. The earliest record of the family mentions a John Monson, who was living in Lincolnshire in 1378. From him lineally sprang William1 Monson, John’s great-great grandson [see Chart 2], who died in 1558, the year Elizabeth I came to the throne.

William Monson1 lived in South Carlton, Lincolnshire, where the most important towns were Boston and Lincoln. Among his many descendants were Knights, Barons, Baronets, Ambassadors, a Viscount, an Admiral, graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, and other officers of the Crown and of the Royal Navy. Many important events of English history are mirrored in their family story.

William1 had four sons: John2, Robert2, and two others.

Robert2 began study at Cambridge University in l546. He was subsequently elected to Parliament, where in 1566 he offended Queen Elizabeth I by persistently pressing for a reply to a petition praying that she marry and nominate her successor in the event of her death without issue, (which was, in fact, the course of history). He was an eminent lawyer and one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas. He died in l583 and was buried in Lincoln Cathedral.

John2 married Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Hussey, and they had six children. One son, Sir John3, was a knight and lived in the Manor at South Carlton, where his family had lived for many generations (and, in fact, still do). He married Jane (or Ann) Dighton and they had ten children.

One of their sons was Admiral Sir William4 Monson, also a knight, who was born in l569 in South Carlton. He was at Oxford University at the age of 14, but went off to sea in 1585 at the age of 16 without the knowledge of his parents. In 1588 he was a lieutenant on the Charles, one of the ships in the fleet which defeated the Spanish Armada in that year. In 1594 he received the honorary degree of Master of Arts from Oxford. He was made Vice-Admiral in 1602 and Admiral in 1604. His distinguished naval career (1588-1635) spanned the reigns of Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I. He retired to his seat at Kinnersley, in County Surrey, where he occupied himself with the preparation of his famous publication, Naval Tracts. He died in 1643, leaving his wife, Dorothy, and four children.

Another son of Sir John3 was Sir Thomas4, also a knight, who lived from 1564 to 1641. He also attended Oxford and left without a degree. He was knighted in 1588 and was awarded the honorary degree of Master of Arts in l605, when he accompanied King James I on a visit to Oxford. He was a favorite of King James I, who made him his master falconer early in his reign, and "such a falconer. . . as no prince in Christendom ever had" [2]. In June of 1611 he was appointed Master of the Armory at the Tower of London and created the First Monson Baronet.

Sir Thomas4 married Margaret, daughter of Sir Edmund Anderson. They had four sons: Sir John5 (l600-l683), Viscount William5, Lodowic5, and Thomas5. With his eldest brother inheriting the family property, this Thomas5 could possibly have been OUR Captain Thomas Munson, who was born in England in 1612, and who was first recorded in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1637. Similarly, Thomas4's youngest brother, Anthony4, settled in Northorp, Lincolnshire, and had five sons, including a Thomas5, who could also possibly have been OUR Captain Thomas — or OUR Thomas could have been a more distant cousin.

Sir John5 married Ursula, the daughter of Sir Robert Oxenbridge, and became the Second Baronet by inheritance on the death of his father. He drained the low-lying lands along the Ancholme River in Lincolnshire and was rewarded with 5,827 acres of the reclaimed region. He was not a university man but was honored with the degree of Doctor of Civil Law by Oxford University in 1642. His legal acumen was noticed by King Charles I, to whom he offered much advice during Charles' severe disagreements with Parliament in l640-42. He built and endowed a free school in South Carlton and a hospital in Burton.

Viscount William5 Monson, brother of John5, lived during the tumultuous reign of King Charles I and participated in his trial and conviction. In 1628 Charles I raised him to the peerage of Ireland, where he made his home, as Viscount Mounson of Castlemaine, County Kerry. Though concerned on behalf of the King as late as 1646, he thereafter took the side of the rebels in the House of Commons. He was a "committee man" for County Surrey and was nominated to be one of the King's judges. Quoting from The Munson Record: ". . . [he] attended the trial on the 20, 22 and 23 of January, 1649, though he did not sign the death-warrant" [see Inset 2].

The Munson Record continues the story as follows:


     The Long Parliament, in May 1659, was obliged, in order to form a quorum, to send for Mounson from the Fleet prison where he was confined for debt. At the Restoration, he was excepted out of the bill of pardon as to pains and penalties, and upon surrendering himself on 21 June 1660 was recommitted to the Fleet [prison]. July 1, 1661 he was degraded of all his honours and titles, and deprived of his property. . . [and] imprisoned for life. . . Mounson declared that his design in sitting at the King's trial was, if possible, to prevent "that horrid murder". The ignominious part of the sentence was duly carried out each year on the anniversary of the King's sentence. Pepys, in his Diary, under date of Monday, 27 Jan. 1661-62, wrote: "This morning. . . called on several ships, to give orders. Going to take water upon Tower-hill, we met with three sleddes standing there to carry my Lord Mounson and Sir H. Mildmay and another, to the gallows and back again, with ropes about their necks."

This Viscount William5 Monson died in about 1672. He married three times but left only one son, Alston6 Monson.

Sir John8, a great-grandson of Sir John5, was born about 1693 and died in 1748. On May 28, 1728, in the first year of the reign of King George II, he was elevated to the peerage as First Baron, becoming Lord John Monson. In 1737 Lord John was appointed First Commissioner of Trade and Plantations. The town of Monson, Massachusetts, incorporated in 1760, was named in his honor.

Lord John9, son of Lord John8, was born July 23, 1727, and became the Second Baron. He was awarded the LL.D. degree at Cambridge University in 1749, and was offered an earldom on a condition which he declined. He died on July 23, 1774.

Lord William John11 (1796-1862), a grandson of Lord John9, became the Sixth Baron. Two of his sons, Lord William John12 and Sir Edmund John12, gave distinguished service to the Crown. Another of his sons was given the unusual name of Debonaire John Monson.

Lord William John12 was born February 18, 1829, and became the Seventh Baron. He was a graduate of Oxford, Treasurer of the Royal Household in 1874, Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard of St. James Palace from 1880 to 1886, Speaker (Lord Chancellor) of the House of Lords in 1882, and Master of the Horse to Queen Victoria from 1892 to 1894. The family estates in 1883 comprised 8,100 acres in Lincolnshire and 2,034 in County Surrey. His country house was Burton Hall, near Lincoln, and his town residence was 29 Belgrave Square, London, S. W.

Sir Edmund John12, brother of Lord William John12, was born October 6, 1834. He was a graduate of Oxford, a member of the British Legation in Washington in 1858, minister to Uruguay in 1879-84, Envoy Extraordinary to the Argentine Republic in 1884-85, and with the British Legations at Copenhagen in 1885-88 and Athens in 1888. This Sir Edmund John12, his brother, and his father were active Monson genealogists.

The 1985 edition of Debrett's Peerage & Baronetage [3] gives up-to-date information about the family. The present Lord John Monson is the eleventh Baron and the fifteenth Baronet. He was born May 3, 1932, and he lives at The Manor House at South Carlton in Lincolnshire. He was educated at Eton School and Trinity College of Cambridge University. In 1955 he married Emma, the daughter of Anthony Devas, ARA. They have three children: sons Nicholas John (born 1955), Andrew Anthony John (born 1959), and Stephen Alexander John (born 1961). The Honorable Nicholas John Monson is married to Hilary Martin and they live in Mombasa, Kenya. They have a son, Alexander John Runan Monson, who was born in 1984.


On The Origins of the Munsons of New England [4]

In New Haven, Connecticut, in 1887, 500 descendants of Captain Thomas Munson attended the 250th anniversary reunion of his first recorded date in America — Hartford, Connecticut, 1637. For this occasion, Sir Edmund John12 Monson wrote from the British Legation in Copenhagen to the members of this reunion: "To your. . . relatives in the Old World, the multiplication of the posterity of your famous ancestor is a very curious circumstance, when we look around us and see how the English branch of the family is limited to very few members indeed." Earlier this distinguished gentlemen had written under date of July 24, 1886, "When I was appointed Attache to the British Legation at Washington in 1858, my Father, Lord Monson [William-John11]. . . was very anxious to know the subsequent career of that branch of the Monsons which had emigrated to America in the Seventeenth Century."

Writing from Burton Hall, Lincoln, on July 10, 1886, Lord William John12 had said: "My father [William John 11] passed a great portion of his life in genealogical researches and has bequeathed to me most valuable M.S.S. on our family history. It was a matter of great disappointment to him that he was never able to collect information respecting the Monsons or Munsons of the United States or connect that branch upon any authentic data with his Lordship's Ancestors in the Mother Country. As his Lordship [William John12] expresses his 'best wishes for the welfare of my Transatlantic Cousins,' so the Honorable Sir Edmund [Edmund John12] extends his congratulations to 'all my American Cousins of the Clan Munson' on the brilliant success of their Reunion in 1887."

Sir Edmund John12 expressed the opinion that their common ancestor was a Dane. "That portion of England [Lincolnshire] where the family was dwelling at the date of our earliest knowledge, in the fourteenth century," he wrote, "had been overrun by the Danes. Many names of families and places in that locality are clearly Danish. The name of Monsen is very common to this day in Denmark" [see Inset 3].

In the introduction to The Munson Record, Myron A. Munson concludes with the statement: "We have outlined the successive generations of this illustrious English family because of the rational presumption that our pioneer-ancestor, Capt. Thomas, sprang from it" [see Inset 4].

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