The Travers: to Lancashire, and the poet’s sister
The Rev. Henry Jones married Catherine Travers in 1782, and of all the houses that marry into this book, the Traverses are the oldest. Burke traces them eight generations back to Elizabethan Lancashire, and the family is older still: they held Nateby Hall, in Garstang, from 1292, kept through three centuries of Thomases and Richards until it was sold in 1626, and bore arms confirmed by the heralds in 1613 (a chevron between three escallops). Our own Bryan Travers, of that country and living in 1583, comes of the stock, though the exact branch is unproven. His son John Travers (d. 1618) crossed to Cork and settled at Ballynamona as Registrar of the Consistory Court of Cork. Between him and Catherine standsSir Robert Travers, knighted in 1625, MP for Clonakilty.
Sir Robert Travers was killed at the Battle of Knocknanuss in 1647. And at that very battle, Colonel Richard Townsend (Chapter 8), another of my direct ancestors, held a command. One ancestor falling, another commanding, on the same Cork field in the same year of the Civil War.