The English ancestry of Reinold and Matthew Marvin of Hartford, Ct ...

Reinold and Matthew Marvin. ioi
For more than two hundred years that part of the County
of Essex which contains Tendring Hundred was familiar
ground to our ancestors, and in the local history of Dover-
court especially, during the sixteenth century, there were
events of more than ordinary interest, which must have been
well known to all who lived in its immediate neighborhood
when they occurred, — particularly the burning of the famous
rood of All Saints, the Parish Church of Dovercourt, at the
dawn of the Reformation.
The name of the town is said to have been derived from
old British words meaning a coast or reach of water. Its
principal manor was early held, if it was not built, by Hugh
Bigod, who married a daughter of one of the De Veres, a
family with large possessions in that vicinity. Early in the
fourteenth century this manor passed to the Mowbrays, and
its history can be traced in Morant. "The village," says
Newcourt, " hath two Fairs ; one is in Lent, even on Good
Friday, the other on that Monday which follows next after
Holy Cross day [Sept. 14], neither of them of any great con-
cernment, being chiefly frequented by the country neighbors
to eat a mess of frumenty, spend a groat in cakes and ale,
or a penny with a pedler." There was once a "Presbyter
Guild " or Fraternity of St. George, with a house not far
from the Church, "for the maintenance of which there
were certain lands and houses and a garden, in Harwich,
and it is supposed," says the same writer, "that the
George Inn, over against the Church, did first take its
name from it, and either was it, or belonged to it. Its