Sir Alexander Zinzan (d. ?1607)

[Malcolm Redfellow]

I see my name has been invoked elsewhere in this forum, so I've signed up to do this one off my own bat, even though it's off my territory and comfort-base.

I was pursuing another line of inquiry altogether, when I came across this from the Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, volume VII: 32 Henry VIII, MDXL, to 33 Henry VIII MDXLII (page 71):

... at Windsor the 24th of October [1540] being present the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Privy Seal, the Comptroller of Household, the Master of the Horses, the Vice-chamberlain, Sir Ralf Sadler secretary.

Upon examination of a complaint put up to the Lord Privy Seal by James Joyner of Saint Albans against Alexander Zynzam & Jakes Granado esquiers desquyryes for breaking the peace & their answer against the said complaint, it was enjoined to Richard Rawnshaw sergeant at arms who was thought to be a great meddler in this matter that the said James Joyner of St Albans, that neither they nor their wives nor the son in law of the said Raynshaw should in any wise meddle or have to do with the body of one Katheryn Tattersall widow which is found by an inquest of office to be lunatic, and that also they should keep the peace against all the King’s servants being abiders there in the town of Saint Albans. It was also enjoined to the said Alexander Zinzam & Jakes Granado that they should in no wise give occasion to any of the said James Joyner nor their wives or to any other to break the peace.

That sent me in search of other references, and I located Alexander Zinzan's son in the Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. This was footnoted as:

the son of Alexander Zinzan, an Albanian Rider of the Stables in the 1550s and 1560s.

Hello! "Albanian"? Of course, at that time the Venetians held territories the length of the Dalmatian coast, so that was not at variance with Charles Rodgers: Memorials of the Earl of Sterling and of the house of Alexander, Chapter XXXIV, (pages 171-8):

According to the learned author of the " History of Reading," Berkshire, the family of Zinzano, supposed to be of Italian origin, settled in England during the reign of Queen Mary (Coates' History of Reading, p. 445). The first reference to any member of the House in England occurs in 1555.

Well, that first reference (above) takes us back a further 15 years.

That said, the Rodgers chapter takes us through the family history into the 18th century at a fair clip. Put that alongside Ashmole's Visitation of Berkshire, 1664-1666, which includes two tables involving the Zinzan family, and the picture seems quite adequate.

If only all the Smiths and Jones seekers had the same initial advantage. All of those sources, by the way, are available on line, with a bit of searching.

Before I desisted with the early Zinzans, I came across a further wrinkle: Robert Zinzan's other son, Sir Sigismund Alexander, was the landlord of the Globe Theatre between 1624 and 1627. Thomas Brend (abt 1516-1598) owned the site, which passed to his son, Nicholas (abt 1561-1601). Sigismund married Nicholas Brend's widow, the former Margaret Strelley. In due course, the property passed on to Sir Matthew Brend, Nicholas's son.

It's a small world.

Now, to satisfy an itch of curiosity, can anyone fully explain those "Albanian" or "Italian" origins?

[Mike Zinzan]

Hello Malcolm,

I think that you will find that the chap that died in 1607 was Sir Robert Zinzan, alias Alexander - he used  Alexander as a surname quite a bit.

He was preceded into England by Hannibal Zinzano, 1519 and by Alexander (Allessandro)Zinzan in about 1528. Hannibal worked for Charles V of Spain, Holy Roman Emperor, and is thought to have come from Modena, Italy.

I lodged with the Society of Genealogists and the Berkshire Records Office copies of my research notes "The Zinzan Families" last year which may be of interest if you are a researcher of this family.

You are quite right with your comments re Smith and Jones as everyone appearing on the Civil Registration records and the Census 1841-1901 with the surname Zinzan can be traced to one family. (The census enumerators and subsequently the transcribers seem to have encountered many problems with this surname.)

Mike

[Mike Zinzan]

The first mention of the Zinzan family in England occurs in 1519 when Haniball Zinzano first came into England at the request of Charles V with a gift of horses for Henry VIII, he was somewhat later described as Hanyball of Modena.  It appears in “The King’s Book of Payments” for 1519 and under the month of August as part of this segment, most of which seems to be relevant:

“To Mons. Gregory, for 18 coursers of Naples, £500.
To Sir Ric. Wingfield for a collar of Esses at making the same Gregory knight, 55¾ oz. at 40s and £6 for the fashion. 
To Mons Coll, for a courser, £66 13s. 4d.
Reward to the riders and keepers, £20.
Their costs at Greenwich from their coming to 15 Aug., £72 19s 6d.
Reward to the Legate of Rome at his departure £200; to his brother £66 13s 4d. to his secretary, £33 6s 8d.
To Hanyball, a farrier who came with the said horses 66s 8d.
To the fraternity of Our Lady Guild at St. Dunstans in the West, 40s.
To Wm. Wyngefeld, riding with a letter from Penhurst to the Cardinal at Asshere, 2s.
Foreign expenses, fees and diets of the commissioners in the Welsh Marches, £340.
To Frauncis de Rege, Ambros de Milann, and Hanyball de Modena, horse keepers, diets, 20d a day.” 


Your earlier reference to Alexander Zinzan of Albania is a new addition to my collection on this family.

If you live in England , there is a copy of a CD which I have produced called "The Zinzan Families" lodged with the Society of Genealogists and the Berkshire Record Office.

Regards, Mike

[John Whysall]

Here's another reference to the Zinzano clan, which goes along with Mike Zinzan's more detailed explication:

Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII for 22nd March 1531:
To Hanyball Zinzano, for drinks and other medicines for the King's horses, 8l. 18s.

See: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 18 Part 1: January-July 1543 (James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie, editors).

Also via : http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=77503&strquery=Zinzano

Meanwhile I wonder if we might see Alexander Zinzano lurking behind this reference, found in Joan Thirsk: The Rural Economy of England, collected essays, page 388:

In 1526 Alexander de Bologna and Jacques de Granado were officers in the royal stable and were still on the payroll in 1544; in 1545 Mathew de Mantua was a studman in the royal stables.

In a footnote [#77] that is sourced as A Collection of Ordinances, p.202. [For which see: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/117019883X/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=103612307&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B0014LC4LM&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=1YM97SFJ2NRC76T8MRVS]

That same footnote continues:

According to William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, writing in 1667, two of Federico Grisone's pupils were brought to England by Henry VIII. These may have been they. William Cavendish, A New Method and Extraordinary Invention to dress Horses (1667), p.2.

I see a small difficulty there: Grisone's school of dressage was established only in 1532. His classic text Cli Ordini de Cavalcare ("The Rules of Horsemanship") is from the 1550s. Or is "Mons. Gregory" (as in Mike Zinzan's previous comment) a possible corruption of "Grisone"?

[Andrew Plumridge]

You may like to know that Alexander Zinzan, also known as Henry Zinzano, is buried at St. Michael's Church in Tilehurst (Reading).  He was married to Jacoba Vanlore (eldest daughter of Sir Peter Vanlore) and died on 18 Nov 1676.  By chance  his tombstone was unearthed this last weekend during the current refurbishment project, so I have attached a picture for your use.

Andrew Plumridge
Architect

[Malcolm Redfellow]

I'd guess this is a ledger stone, and remarkably well preserved.

If I count correctly, this is the third generation of English Zinzans (see Mike Zinzan's posts above).

I'd note a couple of things:

¶ the significance given to Sigismund (again, see above);

¶ the name of Jacoba, which invites us to check out the Vanlore connection.

Pieter van Loor (later Sir Peter Vanlore, Jacoba's grandfather) has a substantial biography in the DNB:

(c.1547–1627), merchant and moneylender, was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands, the third son of Maurice van Loor and his wife, Stephania. He arrived in England about 1568. By 1571 he was lodging with one William Pickarde in the parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West, London; by March 1578, when he was called before the privy council to account for his activities, he was operating as a jewel merchant in the city. Before 19 July 1585, when he was living in the parish of St Benet Sherehog, he had married Jacoba or Jacomina, daughter of Henry Teighbott.

The foundations of Vanlore's extensive fortune seem to have been laid in the 1590s through the supply of jewellery to the royal court. On 17 December 1594 the queen authorized payment of £1700 to him for a single pearl chain. Profits increased dramatically with the accession of James I … he also became one of the most prominent alien merchants lending money to the crown, advancing at least £35,000 by 1625. With Sir Baptist Hickes and Sir William Cockayne he lent an equal share of £30,000 to the government in 1621 to subsidize the proposed Palatinate expedition. In return the king knighted him at Whitehall on 5 November, but he had to wait until after Charles I's accession, and lend further, in order to secure any repayment.

Other securities came in the form of licences. In January 1604 Vanlore was granted a licence to export 15,000 broadcloths for ten years free of duty … Vanlore also speculated in crown lands, acquiring temporary interests in manors in Sedgemoor, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Devon, and elsewhere. While he evidently continued to make regular use of his city contacts from his residence in Fenchurch Street, in 1604 he bought the manor of Tilehurst, near Reading, Berkshire, and over the years he consolidated his property in the locality through purchase and foreclosing mortgages. In 1625 the privy council intervened to assert, against the counter-claims of Sir Richard Lydall, his possession of the manor of Sonning, also in Berkshire, which had come to him as a creditor of the earl of Kellie. By the end of his life:
Sir Peter owned one of the largest estates in Berkshire and, although he had not occupied any important administrative office in the shire, he possessed a great potential influence over county affairs and a social parity with any of his fellow landowners. (Durston, 209)

Yet as a major crown creditor and a conspicuously successful immigrant, Vanlore had been, and had felt himself to be, vulnerable. His naturalization, finalized on 5 May 1610, was no protection against the Star Chamber case brought in 1619 against him and other Dutch merchant strangers alleging illegal export of bullion. The charges were almost certainly fabricated as a pretext for the crown to duck its financial obligations ...
In the event, Vanlore remained in England until his death on 6 September 1627. His will of 29 June that year reveals strong ties both to his native community and to the establishment of his adopted country. Sir Paul Bayning was an overseer and Lord Keeper Sir Thomas Coventry among special friends singled out; the Dutch church, his local parish, and Christ's Hospital all received legacies. This bifurcation was repeated in his children's marriages: those of Peter (bap. 1586) to Susanna Becke of Antwerp and of Elizabeth to Hans van den Bernden; those of Jacquemine (bap. 1587, d. 1606) to Johannes De Laet, newly arrived immigrant, and of Anne to Sir Charles Caesar, master of chancery and third generation immigrant; and those of Mary to Sir Edward Powell, eventually master of requests, and Catherine to Sir Thomas Glemham. Vanlore left each of his grandchildren £1000, but it is unclear to what extent his estate was ever fully reimbursed for his loans: in July 1628 his widow, Jacoba, and her son-in-law Powell were still seeking £13,000 due from the crown. Peter the younger obtained a baronetcy on 6 September that year, but the estates so spectacularly built up were dispersed when he died in 1645 leaving three daughters.

By the look of it, St. Michael's Tilehurst has (literally) turned up a useful bit of local history.

[Andrew Plumridge]

A small amount of information about the previous parish church and the Vanlore and Zinzano families can be found in a guide book to The Parish of Tilehurst published in 1834 and written by J. R. B.  A copy of the text is available through Google books, using the reference: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=c8wHAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=zinzano+tilehurst&source=bl&ots=Xcq1juzL95&sig=xv3FzzaQijhueHXyqKSEZdfNTIw&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
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I believe that Sir Sigismund also lived at Molesey in Surrey for a time, and was at one time appointed Master of Royal Sports to the Court of James I?