ABSTRACT
William Jephson obtained the Manor of Froyle in Hampshire from King Henry VIII in I54I. His son built Froyle Court, now Lord Mayor Treloar's College, in the year of the Armada. Of his two sons, William, the elder, was a prominent member of Parliament, knighted in I6o3, and the subject of a eulogistic epigram by Ben Jonson. He died without issue in I6I I, when the younger son, John, succeeded to the Froyle estate. John was a soldier. After service in the Low Countries, he proceeded to Ireland in I 598 in command of the Earl of Southampton's troop of horse. By I603 he had been promoted to major-general, granted a knighthood and appointed a privy councillor in Ireland. Four years later, he married Elizabeth Norreys, goddaughter of Qyeen Elizabeth, and only surviving child of Sir Thomas Norreys, fifth son of Lord Norreys ofRycote by his wife Margery, daughter of Lord Williams of Thame. Sir Thomas was sometime Lord Justice of Ireland and Lord President of Munster at the time of his death. When the estates of the fifteenth Earl of Desmond were broken up after the Desmond Rebellion in I 579, he received the Castle and Manor of Mallow in County Cork, which passed to the Jephson family by this marriage. It has remained in their possession ever since, but Froyle was sold in I6p.
