Sir Edward Devereux, 1st Baronet

Edward Devereux acquired considerable wealth during his lifetime. For a payment of £1000 to support efforts for suppressing a rebellion in Ireland, King James I of England created him Baronet of Castle Bromwich on 25 November 1611 (10 Jac 1). He was knighted the following year. When his son and heir, Walter Devereux, married his second wife (probably in January 1615), Edward settled on him the Herefordshire manor of Stoke Lacy.

Following Edward’s death, his son Walter engaged in a bitter quarrel over his inheritance with his mother Catherine. The source of their dispute was an agreement made in 1601. As a widow, Catherine was to retain possession of Castle Bromwich during her lifetime. In return, she was to pay her son an annual rent of £40; allow him to occupy a designated suite of rooms in the manor house if he wished; and grant him the right to receive the profits of timber on the estate. These arrangements, which had seemed acceptable when they were made, were now regarded by Walter Devereux as distinctly unattractive. Lady Catherine had already been well provided for, both by her husband Edward and his father, the 1st Viscount Hereford; between them, they had granted her a jointure estate worth £400 per annum. Her lease of Castle Bromwich gave her an additional £120 a year in clear profit. All told, Walter complained, his mother’s landed income was now of a greater yearly value than the lands and tenements he had as heir of his father. Catherine responded to these complaints in February 1623 by accusing her son in Chancery of making Castle Bromwich the subject of secret conveyances, and of refusing to allow her half the interest on loans made by her husband during his lifetime. As Sir Edward had £21,000 out on loan at his death, the sum involved was substantial. Unfortunately for Walter Devereux, the 1601 lease agreement was valid in law, and consequently, his mother Catherine retained Castle Bromwich and most of its contents until her death in 1627.

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