The Kennedys of
Lichfield have in every generation since at least the mid 1800s believed that
they were descended from the Kennedys who ruled Ayrshire since at least the
1200s. Lord Justice Sir William Rann Kennedy
(1846-1915) believed he had proved descent from Kennedy of Girvanmains and had
Arms drawn up accordingly. Over the
years a number of legends have grown up within the family. These are of interest as they cast light on
the family’s collective preoccupations.
There is a legend of a
Kennedy lady who arrived in Lichfield in 1715 with three sons as a result of
the Jacobite upheavals throughout Britain on the ascent of George I of the
House of Hanover to the Throne. There is
apparently no evidence for this in the parish registers of the period but in
itself the story is curious for its indication of belief in the Scottish link.
Some Kennedys believe
that members of the family were involved in the 1745-6 uprising of Prince
Charles Edward Stuart. There is an item
of clothing with blood on it associated with this legend. Most who are interested seem to believe that
the family were Jacobites.
Most Kennedys over
the years who have expressed a view believed that they are directly related to
the ruling family in Ayrshire, the
Cassilis family. A number of family
chairs - a few of which still exist - were embroidered with Cassilis heraldic
dolphins during the latter 1800s or possibly in Edwardian times. There is an amount of silver cutlery and
other items displaying heraldic dolphins.
Some of the Kennedys
have however shown loyalty to another family
– that of Maddox, to which one of the Kennedys became allied by
marriage. This was taken to the extent
of using the Maddox coat of arms.
There was a William
Kanady who was pardoned for taking part in the Protestant Uprising led by the
Duke of Monmouth against the Catholic King James II in 1685. There is no way currently of proving that he
was a Lichfield Kanady though it could have been a son born in the 1640s to the
William and Margory mentioned in the Parish Registers for St Michael in the
1650s.
The Kennedys were
resident in Lichfield in Staffordshire at least as far back as the
Commonwealth. One William Kanady’s wife
Margory is recorded as being buried in 1655 in the Parish Registers of St
Michael’s Church, on Green Hill, the focus of the Bower Day celebration for
which that ancient city is reknowned.
What was a Scottish Kennedy doing in Lichfield? There were few Scottish names of note in the
Midlands in the first half of the 17th Century. One that does crop up in Stebbing Shaw is
that of Balmerinoch – Lord Elphinstone.
This Scottish Lord was granted the lands of Shenstone Park by Charles
I. This seems an odd act on the part of
the monarch – Balmerinoch’s father had been executed by Charles’ father James
when he was still only King of Scotland for forging a letter from the King to
the Pope – thereby smearing him as a papist.
The Balmerinoch who was awarded Shenstone Park was still a staunch
Presbyterian. Perhaps it was some
attempt to buy off the tough religious zealot.
The lands did not remain in Balmerinoch’s hands for long, but perhaps a Kennedy cohort settled in the
district after having travelled to Shenstone on his employer’s business.
More promisingly for
our story, one Sir John Kennedy held lands in Kenilworth in Warwickshire, in
the early part of the English reign of King James VI of Scotland and I of
England. He was a courtier who married
to Elizabeth the daughter of Giles, Lord Chandos much against his Lordship’s
wishes. Chandos complained much about
his son-in-law, but James personally
asked him to bear with Kennedy, as he
loved him very much. Sir John was an
unstable character whose debts seem to have been many. They eventually became the business of King
James who had to set some of them aside.
Kennedy appeared in a
masque by Ben Jonson, the costumes by
Inigo Jones in 1608. He was one of the
signs of the zodiac and along with him were The Duke of Lennox, the Earls of
Arundel, Montgomery, and Pembroke, the Lords D'Aubigny, De Walden, Hay, and
Sanquhar, the Master of Mar, Sir Robert Rich, and a Mr. Erskine.
The Kennedy marital
troubles ended up being discussed in the House of Lords after his wife was
turned out of their home in her nightclothes.
Sir John died in 1623
with his debt problem still left for his executors to sort out.
The name of William
Kanady is not mentioned in the accounts of The Civil War as being among the
defending forces involved in the last of the sieges of The Close – as the
fortifications around the Cathedral were known,
and indeed as the area formerly defended by those walls is still
described today. However this earliest
known Lichfield Kanady showed his loyalties by being elected as a churchwarden
at St Michaels in 1664. This indicates
that he was almost certainly a loyalist to the King and the Established
Church. The Vicar of St Michaels of the period had been incumbent since 1638 and
was – in common with the other vicars in Lichfield – a staunch Established
Churchman. At no time in the darkest
hour of Cromwellian Dissenter Rule did a nonconformist preacher take over in St
Michaels. Feeling was so strong in the
City generally that, for example, the Parish Register at St Marys of the period
is inscribed (in Latin) ‘The Era Of Oliver The Tyrant’ – and this at a time
when Commonwealth spies were everywhere.
After his defeat at the Battle of Naseby King Charles I was welcomed
sorrowfully and reverentially to Lichfield by the two bailiffs and sheriff of
Lichfield who presented the City’s maces to him (the items subsequently
disappeared upon his capture).
Therefore we might
deduce that Mr Kennedy, and perhaps his wife (though he might have met her
afterwards) straggled into Lichfield sometime in the 1650s, possibly fleeing from the failed revolt of
Charles II which ended with defeat and massacre of Scottish and other Royalist
troops at Worcester. Perhaps he was a
Scottish recruit to that ill-fated attempt to restore the Stuart heir to the
throne of England. He was of an age
where he could have been a combatant at that period in the Civil War.
Little else can be
deduced concerning the William whose wife died in 1655. He was too old to be father of the William
who was married in 1698, therefore he
must be his grandfather. The son of
William and Margory (d. 1655), father of the William who was married in 1698
would have been born in the 1650s though no record of this birth has been seen.
This period was the
lowest point in Lichfield’s history. The
Cathedral and its Close had been ruined by the occupation of the Royalist Army.
The Cathedral spire had been blown off by Sir William Brereton’s
Parliamentarian cannons and the mediaeval frescoes and carvings blasted away by
Puritan fanatics. The Cathedral library
had been destroyed by the new custodians of the Public Good. The Close was a
midden-strewn ruin, with squatters
occupying the former grand residences.
Prominent Lichfield citizens had to forfeit their residences and lands
as a penalty for their loyalty to the King,
No longer were the purses of the senior clergy of the Cathedral opened
in the town as these dignitaries were banished by the new dissenting
order. This meant no work for the
members of the Trades Guilds who had relied on the wealthy inhabitants of the
Close for their custom. Many of the old
timber houses had been destroyed during the sieges. Over a quarter of the population of the City
died of the plague in the mid 1640s – a proportion far bigger than that which
perished in London in 1665.
William is covered in more detail here
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