Source Text:
Page 432: Thomas Baker, gent., is listed as marrying Grysill Barners on the 23 of October 1572.
Main story:
Anthony died while still quite young, and the Berner’s property seems to have been passed to his infant son and his cousin Griseld as co-heirs. The boy was called Anthony after his father, and was perhaps brought up with Griseld’s own boy of the same age, for his mother, the fascinating Mary Gedge, took unto herself a third husband, John Butler by name, by whom she had one daughter Sara.
Griseld Berners married Thomas Baker of Sissinghurst, Kent. It may have been Griseld and her husband who built the two hiding-places in Fryerning Hall, which are up the big kitchen chimney.
Thomas Baker's father, a Privy Councillor during three reigns, had been among those who in Edward VI’s reign had refused to sign against the succession of Mary, so probably the family was inclined to Roman Catholicism.
Lady Petre was hiding papists at Ingatestone Hall at this time. She was connected with the Bakers, for her daughter by her former husband, Thomas Tyrell, married Thomas Baker's brother.* Difficulties
arose concerning the dower lands, which Griseld did not consider Dame Mary ought to retain now that she had married again ; a lawsuit ensued which was celebrated as the great Butler and Baker case. Griseld seems to have left the neighbour-hood, and Anthony and his mother and stepfather sold Fryerning to the tenant in April 1588, but they got it back again in June. Thos. Shawe, the tenant, may have lived at Fryerning Hall at this time.
Griseld Baker died in 1589,* leaving a son called Richard, 11 years of age. Thomas Baker seems to have married again, for in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1591, is a letter from Thos. Baker to a friend who has evidently been commissioned to get some things for him : * I perceive
you are mindful of my wife's hat, she cannot take her journey to London without she has it.’
It would seem that when Anthony Berners came of age he did not keep to some agreement concerning Thoby and Fryerning Manors, for there was a lawsuit about this between him and
Thomas Baker. In 1607 Anthony Berners sold Fryerning to Sir Nicholas Wadham, but kept Thoby for his mother, who was living there in 1616. Anthony himself lived chiefly in London
now, and was known as Anthony Berners of London.
