The Manor of Studleys

The arms of the Barony of Bedford

Volume III of The Victoria County History for Bedfordshire was published in 1912. It gives detailed histories for each of the manors in Wootton. Studleys Manor was created by the Barony of Bedford which subinfeudated some of its lands in Wootton to the Saint Edward family; in other words, the Saint Edwards became tenants of the barony who remained as overlord until the barony was dissolved in 1265 with the Saint Edwards being the Lords of the Manor.

The Saint Edwards are first mentioned in connection with the manor in 1224. John Saint Edward’s daughter Joan married Thomas Studley in the early 14th century and was Lord of the Manor in 1318. Thomas dies in 1342 and his son Thomas seems to have conveyed the manor to trustees who sold it to Newnham Priory in 1389.

The priory was dissolved by King Henry VIII (1509-1547) in 1541. In 1542 the Crown annexed the manor to the newly created Honour of Ampthill. In 1610 the site of the manor house was granted to John Eldred for sixty years, the Crown retaining the rest of the manor. Like Canons Manor, Studleys was subsequently bought by Richard Button. His daughter married Edmund Wingate, a mathematician who had been tutor to Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s queen, in Paris. His son Button Wingate conveyed the manor to Richard and Thomas Yarway from whom it later passed to the Monoux family. The manor is last mentioned in 1729 and was then merged, along with Canons, into the other, more important, manorial holdings of the family in Wootton.

The Monoux family coat of arms