Re: Origin of the name Snead
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In reply to:
Origin of the name Snead
8/13/00
SNEAD/SNEED
1.A Snad or Snead of land betokens a piece of ground within defined limits, but without enclosures; public woods and pasture ground, whose boundaries are fixed by notches on trees and stakes.Leo’s A-Sax.Nomenclature.The expression, sneath of land, occurs in a Norfolk document dated 1699.
2.Perhaps the same name as Sneyd
SNEYD
A parish in Shropshire, and a hamlet in the parish of Tunstall, County, Stafford.From the latter, the family designated “the noble race of Sneyds, of great worship and account,” derive their origin.Thy were seated there by Henry III, King of England.
By marriage with the heiress of Tunstall they acquired other lands in that parish, and for two generations they were called Sneyd alais Tunstall.Shirley’s Nobel and Gentle Men.
The arms of the family are a “curiosity of heraldry,” being partly of the allusive kind, and cvonsistingof a scythe and a fleur-de-lis.The pun is in the handle of the scythe, proventually called a snead )A-Sax. Snaed).The fleur-de-lis is traditionally said to have been added to the coat by Richard de Tunstall, alais Sneyd, after the battle of Poictiers; but I should rather consider it to have been a part of the original device, and to have an allegorical reference to the mortality of man.“the flower of the field,” which “in the evening is cut down and withereth.”
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REF:Information taken from the Book of Heraldry, page 322