Kitley Heritage - Bastard impaling Pollexfen

14/ Or a chevron azure Impaling Quarterly 1 & 4 Argent a lion rampant gules 2 & 3 Azure – Bastard impaling Pollexfen

The last of the Gerston line of Bastards, William was baptised at West Alvington on 15th July 1667, eldest son and heir of Sir William Bastard (q.v. shield 5), and married Anne, daughter of Edmund Pollexfen of Kitley (q.v. shield 13), heiress to the Pollexfen estates at some now undefined date c1692 – it is a strange circumstance that the exact date and whereabouts of the marriage has not yet been found.

The Edmund Pollexfen had extensively rebuilt Kitley has already been suggested (q.v. shield 13), although this has not been proven by documentary research. However, it can be surmised by the fact that, upon the inheritance (after the death of Edmund Pollexfen in 1710), the Bastards immediately transferred their principal seat from Gerston near Kingsbridge to Kitley in Yealmpton. The Bastards were indisputably the principal family in the Bastard/Pollexfen marriage, for they owned extensive lands in South Devon and also the Barton of Duloe in Cornwall, and so it must have been the luxury of Kitley House itself – as opposed to the pure financial aspects of the inheritance – which promoted the Bastards to transfer their main power base to Yealmpton. Kitley House as thus elevated to a status which it had probably not enjoyed at any previous period in its long history (q.v. shield 10), becoming the principal seat of the Bastards, and the “capital messuage” of the Manor of Yealmpton (q.v. shield 15).

Returning briefly to the Pollexfens, about whom so little has been related in previously published sources, one member of the family, at least, had some claim to fame in the late seventeenth century. Sir Henry Pollexfen, born at Stancombe c1638, the some of Andrew Pollexfen of Mothecombe was Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster. His rise to prominence came about because some year earlier, as a barrister, he was the successful counsel at a famous trial, of the seven bishops who had been committed to the Tower of London after petitioning King James II to revoke an Order of the Council of 1688 which had suspended the penal laws against Catholics. They were accused in the trumped-up indictment of “Contriving, Making & Publishing a Seditious Libel in Writing against His Majesty”. Following the defence by Henry Pollexfen and others, the bishops were pronounced not guilty and were acquitted, their release prompting celebrations throughout the nation. Thus King James II’s moves to restore England to Catholicism were thwarted, and the trial must have had a major part to play in the events which took place later that year, which led ultimately to his abdication and the instalment of William of Orange – and his wife Mary, daughter of King James II – on the English throne.