12/31/2023 0 Comments Ball lightning in houseHe was declared by the crown to be the heir to his older brother Anthony, who was among those who succumbed to their injuries. There is no doubt that Nicholas inherited his father’s lands as a result of the destruction of most members of his immediate family. Image from Joe Thomissen, via The New Scientist The sole survivors were Nicholas and his younger brother Henry.īall lightning. As they were eating ‘a fiery, sulphureous globe’ rolled into the dining room through the parlour door, killing one member of the family immediately and injuring six others so badly that they subsequently died of their wounds. According to the 1712 account of the Gloucestershire historian Sir Thomas Atkyns, Nicholas was dining at home one day in 1556 with his family – his father and six or seven of his brothers and sisters – when a fierce storm struck. Walsh was one of the younger sons of Maurice Walsh of Little Sodbury. Of all the incidents which resulted in a future MP inheriting his father’s estate in the sixteenth century, perhaps the most bizarre is that which reportedly involved Nicholas Walsh, who went on to sit for Gloucestershire in the Parliament of 1563-66. Far from being shocked, his father is said to have laughed, telling Edward ‘it was the best shoot he ever shot in his life’. While practising at archery, he inadvertently killed his elder brother. According to the seventeenth century antiquary Sir William Dugdale, young Edward became his father’s heir-apparent as a result of an unfortunate accident. Take the case of Edward Greville (1556-1634), the second son of Lodovick Greville of Milcote, in Warwickshire. Normally this was the result of illness, but just occasionally the circumstances surrounding the elevation of a young man to the top spot in the family pecking order were peculiarly tragic. Either they were the eldest son at birth, or they stepped into the shoes of an older brother (or brothers) who predeceased them. It’s probably no surprise that by the time they sat in Parliament, many members of the Commons were (or were likely to become) the beneficiaries of inherited wealth. Here, the editor of our Lords 1558-1603 project describes the unexpected fate of the unfortunate Walsh family in 1556. In their work our researchers have discovered many strange and unusual causes of the death that have befallen parliamentarians over the centuries one such case is the subject of Dr Andrew Thrush‘s new blog.
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