I happen to have at hand a copy of the Grant {428} of Arms to Sir John of
East Harptree, Somerset, in 1567 in which, on the authority of the heralds
of the day, arg. on a chevron az. 3 garbs or, are granted to him in the
first quarter as the arms of Robert Cradock _alias_ Newton. The Judge seems
to have been the first of the family who dropped the name of Cradock. His
forefathers, for several generations (from Howel ap Grononye, who was Lord
of Newton, in Rouse or Trenewith, in Poursland), went by the name of Cradog
Dom. de Newton.

Robert Cradock, mentioned in the Grant I have quoted, married Margaret
Sherborne. He was the Judge's great-great-grandfather. Sir John Newton, to
whom the grant was made, lies buried at East Harptree; and on his tomb may
be seen (besides his effigies as large as life) the twelve quarterings in
their original (?) blazoning, impaled with those of his wife, one of the
Pointz family. The same arms (of Newton) are still discernible on a
beautifully wrought, though now much mutilated shield, over one of the
doors of Barres Court, at East Hanham, in Bitton, Gloucestershire, where
Newton also had a residence, where John Leland on his itinerary visited
him, and says (_Itin._ vol. vii. p. 87.) "his very propre name is Caradoc,"
&c. This property Newton inherited as a descendant from the De Bittons or
Button (through Hampton), a family of great note in their day, and
residents on the site of Barres Court, a "fayr manner place of stone,"
which evidently took its name from Sir John Barre, who married Joan, the
relict of Robert Greyndon, and daughter of Thomas Roug by Catherine, who
was the last heiress of that branch of De Bittons--(she died 1485, and is
buried with her first husband at Newlond). Of the same family were the
three bishops of that name, in the reigns of the early Edwards; one of
which, _Thomas_, Bishop of Exeter in 1299, was the pious founder of a
chantry chapel adjoining Bitton Church, over the bodies of his father and