I seek information as to the family and arms of Theophilus Eaton, Esq., Deputy Governor of the Eastland Merchants Company, agent of the King at the Court of Denmark, and the first Governor of the New Haven colony. In the collections of the New Haven Colony Historical Society there is a portrait of a young woman, which formerly belonged to Governor Eaton. In the upper left-hand corner is the inscription Ǽtatis suæ, 25, 1635, and in the upper right-hand corner is a coat of arms. There is a reproduction of the face, without the arms and inscription, at p. 115 of Atwaters History of the New Haven Colony. The portrait is so darkened by age that certain features of the arms are difficult to make out. Some years ago (probably about 1864) the following explanatory writing was attached to the portrait: — Ancient portrait, formerly in the New Haven Museum, supposed to be that of a relative of Governor Eaton. At the right is the shield, divided into three pile or wedge shaped parts. On the sinister division is a running greyhound, which distinguishes the arms of the Morton family of Cheshire co., England, of which was the wife of Governor Eaton. Resting on the shield appears to be a full-faced helmet designating a baronet or knight. The crest above the helmet appears to be a ducal coronet with the feathers of the Prince of Wales. This is conjectured to have reference to the Yale family, whose progenitors were of the first order of nobility in North Wales. Can any one tell to what family it belongs? To know this would, without doubt, throw much light upon many questions connected with Governor Eatons and allied families. The portrait was painted in 1635, doubtless in London, and in 1637 Mr. Eaton came to America. It has been conjectured that the portrait is either that of Mary Eaton, daughter of the Governor, who became the wife of Valentine Hill, Esq., of Boston, or of Ann Yale, daughter of Governor Eatons second wife (by her first husband, David Yale), and the aunt of Governor Elihu Yale, from whom Yale College derived its name, who became the wife of Edward Hopkins, Esq., second Governor of the Connecticut colony, and after his return to England Commissioner of the Admiralty and Navy, Member of Parliament, &c, who died in London in 1657. That the portrait is that of Mrs. Hopkins seems to have been the theory of the writer of the explanatory note above quoted; but the Yale arms and crest bear no resemblance whatever to this (see Burke, Yale, of Plas-yn-Yale, co. Denbigh, of which family was Governor Elihu Yale). Yale Arms: Ermine, a saltire gu. fretty or. Crest, a mount vert, thereon a boar az. within a net or, in the mouth an acorn slipped ppr. Moreover David Yale was married to his wife Ann (Morton ?) in 1613, three years after the birth of the lady of the portrait (1610). Mather, Eatons contemporary, in his Magnalia, states that Governor Eatons second wife was the widow of David Yale, and the daughter of the Bishop of Chester, not stating which bishop, and Prof. Kingsley, some years since, appears to have assumed, in his Bicentennial Address on the Founding of the New Haven Colony, that she was the daughter of Thomas Morton, Bishop of Chester and Durham, which statement has been followed by the historian of the Yale family, as also by the writer of the above-quoted note. The Morton family bearing for arms running greyhounds, a3 referred to in the note, was probably (see Burke) one of two Cheshire families named Morton, with arms, first, Ar., a greyhound courrant sa., collared vert, rimmed of the first; crest, a greyhounds head ar., collared vert, rimmed of the first; or else, secondly, Ar., a greyhound in full course sa., collared gu.; crest, a wolfs head. Probably the former. On this theory the arms shown must be a kind of impaling or quartering, i.e., the shield divided by lines into pile-shaped figures with the wifes arms displayed on the sinister side instead of being impaled or quartered in the ordinary way. Was this method of impaling or quartering by pile-shaped divisions ever in vogue? Bishop Thomas Morton, however, according to all authorities, was never married, and his mortuary inscription describes him as senex et cælebs (see Ormerods Cheshire). It has been conjectured, with considerable force, by Prof. Dexter, of Yale College, who has published some investigations on the Eaton and Yale families, that Mrs. Ann Eaton, the Governors second wife and relict of David Yale, was the daughter of Bishop George Lloyd, Bishop Mortons immediate predecessor. He was the son of Meredydd Lloyd, of Caernarvonshire, born 1560, Rector of Thornton and Bangor, Bishop of Sodor and Man 1600, Bishop of Chester 1604, where he died Aug. 1, 1615, and was buried in his own cathedral. His arms, according to Burke, were Sa., three nags heads erased ar. If his will could be found it might settle the question of the ancestry of Ann (Yale) Eaton, who is the ancestor of so many families, English and American (Eaton, Jones, Yale, Hopkins, &c). The portrait is No. 250 of the New Haven Historical Societys Collection. Nos. 251 and 252 are portraits respectively of an English cardinal and bishop. They also are from the Old Connecticut Museum, and were undoubtedly received at the same time and from the same source as No. 250. They probably all belonged to the Eaton family; and the three portraits very much resemble each other and seem to confirm the statement of Mather, that Governor Eatons wife was the daughter of the Bishop of Chester. Were it not for the evidence that Bishop Morton died unmarried, one might readily suppose them to be portraits of Bishop Thomas and Cardinal John Morton, who, as is well known, were of the same family. If the ladys portrait is that of Mary Eaton, wife of Valentine Hill, or any other of the Governors daughters, then the arms are probably those of Governor Eaton himself; but, so far as known to the writer, the Governor used no arms, a seal sometimes used by him on New England documents being a plain device bearing the initials T,E.; but as he seems to have discarded all such vanities after his arrival in the colonies, not much can be argued from the fact that no arms appear on his seal. From the position, public and private, which he held in England we should naturally expect him to display arms. I have found no families of the name Eaton, Etton, or Eton, bearing any arms like those of the portrait, though the crest of the family of Eden, of Kent and Suffolk, was a plume of ostrich feathers (Fairbairns Crests/ plate xii. fig. 9).
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 06:53:50 +0000