The Hawkins of Nash Court. In the reign of Edward III Andrew Hawkins married an heiress, Joan de Nash, and the Hawkins came into possession of Nash Court near Faversham in Kent. His line continued down to Thomas Hawkins of Nash who, dying in 1588, was buried with his wife in the north chancel of Boughton church. On a tomb of Bethersden marble lay his figure in brass with the following inscription:
“He served King Henry VIII, which won him same, who was a gracious prince to him, and made well to spend his aged days; that he was high of stature, his body long and strong, excelling all that lived in his age.”
The Hawkins family was and remained a Catholic family. In 1715, during the ferment at the time of the rebellion in Scotland, Nash Court was plundered by the locals.
“Every part of the furniture, family pictures, writings of the estate and family, were burnt by them, with an excellent library of books; and the family plate was carried off and never heard of afterwards.”
The Hawkins of Trewithen. John Hawkins was the first member of the Hawkins family to move to Cornwall. Originally a courier to Henry VIII, he decided to leave Nash Court in 1554 to escape the turmoil of a rebellion against the Catholic Queen Mary. He settled at Trewinnard near St. Erth, married and established a maritime trading business through Mevagissey which thrived for many years.
It was Phillip Hawkins who established the Hawkins dynasty at Trewithen. He was a wealthy attorney and landowner when he bought Trewithen in 1715. He commissioned the London architect Thomas Edwards to rebuild the house and lay out the park. When he died childless, the estate passed to his nephew Thomas Hawkins (whose parents lived at Trewinnard), thereby uniting the two branches of the Hawkins family in Cornwall.
Thomas fell in love with Anne Heywood, the daughter of a wealthy cloth merchant and banker in London. She agreed that they could marry on the proviso that his architect, Sir Robert Taylor, was commissioned to re-design and embellish Trewithen House. The work was carried out and, in addition, Thomas had plans drawn up for landscaping the gardens. Unfortunately Thomas died after having inoculated himself against smallpox and the estate passed to his eldest son Christopher.
Although Christopher never married, he did an enormous amount for both Trewithen and Cornwall during his lifetime. He opened new tin and copper mines in the area, became involved in clay mining near St. Austell, and rebuilt the harbor at Pentewan and the breakwater at St. Ives. Politically, he was Father of the House of Commons by virtue of the number of “rotten boroughs” that he controlled.
Sir John Hawkins and His Descendants. It is a truth universally acknowledged that all Hawkins believe they are descended from the Admiral. And this applies to Hawkins on both sides of the Atlantic. One Hawkins wrote in as follows:
“I have a photocopy of Sir John Hawkins and one of my maternal great grandfather John P. Hawkins. The resemblance is amazing, down to moustache and beard. I cannot – at present anyway – claim descendancy from the famous admiral, but contemplation is very interesting!”
Mary Hawkins in her 1888 book Plymouth Armada Heroes provided the first published tree of Hawkins descendants.
More recent works on the Plymouth Hawkins have been:
- James Williamson’s 1949 book Hawkins of Plymouth, sub-titled “a new history of Sir John Hawkins and of the other members of his family prominent in Tudor England.”
- and Michael Lewis’s 1969 book The Hawkins Dynasty: Three Generations of a Tudor Family.
In addition, Alexander Mitton published privately in 1960 Pedigree of the Family of Hawkins of County Devon. Harvey Coney from Harlow in Essex also produced Hawkins lineages at about the same time. And there are many Hawkins family trees on the internet.
Research provided by: https://selectsurnames.com/hawkins/