Lyneham Village Online has spent over three years collating and arranging information on the Button-Walker-Heneage families, which have significant associations with the history of Lyneham village.

Heneage Family
The family of Heneage was originally of Hainton, Lincolnshire and its pedigree which dates from the Norman Conquest, has been traced from Sir Robert Heneage who lived in the reign of Henry I. [1100-1135].

Early records traced from the we find John De Heneage born c1210 in Lincolnshire married about c1235 in Lincolnshire and had one son Walter De Heneage who was born approximately after this parents married. We have not found who Walter de Heneage married in about c1265 but he had a son called William de Heneage born c1270. William married at the age of twenty-five and had one son John de Heneage born in the following decade of the next century c1310. He had a son of the same name John (William) Heneage who was born c1365 in Hainton, Lincolnshire.

The following few generations of the Heneage family, who lived at the manor of Hainton Hall, Hainton, repeat itself keeping their fathers christian name. Walter de Heneage, a direct descendant living in the middle of the 15th century had two sons, William de Heneage who, settling in East Sussex established a family there, which is now extinct, and John de Heneage born c1452 who, remaining at Hainton had by his wife, Catherine Wimbish daughter of Thomas Wimbish, four sons, and died 31st May 1530.

The eldest son, Thomas [with whom his nephew Sir Thomas Heneage, the younger, Vice Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth, is often confused] was in early life gentleman usher to Wolsey, became Gentleman of the King's Privy Chamber after Wolsey's fall, and actively supported Thomas Cromwell's ecclesiastical policy. While engaged in suppressing the Cistercian Abbey near Louth in October 1536 he was severely attacked by an angry mob, and the disturbance proved the prelude to the great rebellion known at the Pilgrimage of Grace.

Thomas Heneage was knighted on 10th October 1537 and received many grants of lands belonging to the dissolved monasteries. He died on 21st August 1553 and was buried in Hainton Church, Lincolnshire, where a monument with effigies in brass of himself and his wife still remains.

The second son George was chaplain to Wolsey and in 1526 became Dean and Archdeacon of Lincoln. Before 1544 he had resigned the Deanery but remained Archdeacon till his death in September 1549. He was buried in Lincoln Cathedral.
The third son John succeeded his brother Sir Thomas in the Hainton estates. We are not now concerned with the Hainton or main stem of the family, but the family still lives at Hainton and in 1896 Edward Heneage was created a Baron.

Robert, the fourth son, from whom springs the family in which are at present interested, left by his first wife Lucy, daughter and co-heiress of Ralph Buckton, a large family. He had held important offices, being appointed Auditor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Surveyor of the Queen's Woods beyond Trent. Of his sons Sir Thomas Heneage called the younger to distinguish him from his uncle Sir Thomas of whom we have spoken above succeeded to his father's estates in 1556. Queen Elizabeth appointed him a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber soon after her accession and Treasurer of the Queen's Chamber in 1570. He was knighted at Windsor on 1st December 1577 and the Master of the Rolls appointed him, jointly with his youngest brother Michael, Keeper of the Records in the Tower about the same time. Elizabeth trusted Heneage and it is reported in 1565 that he was in such good favour with her as to excite the jealousy of Leicester. The Queen made him many valuable grants of land chiefly in Essex. In September 1589 he succeeded Sir Christopher Hatton as Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household and became a Privy Councillor.

At his house in the Savoy he entertained the Queen on the 7th December 1594. It should be recorded that Queen Elizabeth gave her miniature on some occasion to Sir Thomas, and accorded him the privilege of bearing the knot known as the Heneage Knot on his shield of arms with the motto "Fast tho' united". Only three other families could boast of this distinction, the Earls of Stafford and the families of Bourchier and Wake or Ormonde. He died on the 17th October 1595. He was twice married and left, by his first wife Anne Poyntz an only surviving child Elizabeth who by her marriage in 1573 with Sir Moyle Finch became the ancestress of the Finches and Finch-Hattons, Earls of Winchilsea. By his second wife Mary, eldest daughter of Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montague and widow of Henry Wriothesley, second earl of Southampton whom he married in 1614, he left no issue.

Sir Michael Heneage married Grace Honeywood daughter of Robert Honeywood and Mary Waters on the 12th August 1577 at St Mary Le Bow, London and died in 1600, carried on the line and as will be seen from the pedigree, Sir Michael Heneage was joint-keeper of H.M. Records with his brother Sir Thomas Heneage, born 21st January 1581, at St. Catherine, London, Middlesex. Sir Thomas Heneage Esq., during his third marriage to Bridget Woodward, on the 17th May 1630, at All Hallows Wall, London, Middlesex, England, had two children Sir Michael and Elizabeth Heneage. Bridget Woodward was the daughter of George Woodward and Elizabeth Honeywood.

The family ran on for three generations till it ended in three daughters Cecil, Phoebe and Bridget, the eldest of whom Cecil was married in 1692 to John Walker of Hadley, County of Middlesex.