Mede, Richard

[Mead8.FTW]

This connection is uncertain, combining information from several sources.

According to "William Mead, Quaker, and his relatives" a tract written by Henry J. Mead and published in 1918 (Family Tracts Vol. 33 in the Society of Genealogists Library) the Mead family of Soulbury is related to the Meade family of Elmdon and Clavering in northwest Essex. His reasoning:

"The connection of the Soulbury Meades with the Meades of Elmdon is shown by the fact that Dr. Richard Mead (William Mead''s nephew) in the preface to his Medica Sacra stated that he was related to the eminent divine Joseph Mead (1586-1638) [born in Berden, Essex] and Dr. Richard''s contemporary and biographer, Maty, makes the same statement. Joseph Mead is stated by Foss (Foss''s Lives of the Judges) to have belonged to the family of Mr. Justice Meade and is stated in the Register of Christ''s College, Cambridge, to have been a kinsman of Sir John Meade of Wendon Lofts. Moreover the arms used by the Revd Matthew Mead (William Mead''s brother) and by Dr. Richard were those of the Elmdon Meades, viz., Sable, a chevron between three pelicans or vulning themselves gu. These arms appear on contemporary engraved portraits of Matthew Mead and Dr. Richard Mead and on the monument to Richard in Westminster Abbey and on the monument to Samuel Mead, the Doctor''s brother, in the Temple Churchyard."

According to "The Grazebrook Pedigree" Vol. 1 PE 103, a handwritten manuscript by O.H. Grazebrook and donated to the Society of Genealogists Library, the earliest ancestor of the Meads in Soulbury and Stewkley was Richard Mead, churchwarden of Soulbury in 1523 and born in around 1480-90. There were two Richard Medes born in Essex at that time, sons of the brothers Thomas and William Mede. Richard, the son of Thomas, is probably the Richard Meade whose will is dated 1535 in Manuden, Essex. This would make this Richard the son of William Mede of Berden, Essex.