Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.

54 RAMBLES ABOUT PORTSMOUTH.
As we undertand it, it is to the estates in the counties
of York and Lancaster, of the very ancient house of the
Sherburnes of Stonihurst, always papists, and intermarried
with leading papist families in England; the last baronet,
Sir Nicholas Sherburne, dying in 1714: when they are understood to have gone to his only child, the Duchess of
Norfolk, she and the duke papists, and at her death to the
heirs of her father's sister, in 1754, she having no children
to take them, which heirs are still the Welds of Lulworth
Castle, county of Dorset, always papists, of which one was
the late well known Cardinal Weld. These estates are to
be claimed through Henry Sherburne of Piscataway, who
must have been born not long after Queen Elizabeth died.
The then lord of Stonihurst was Richard.Sherburne,
who married into a noble family. Now we have first to
show beyond all cavil in a court of law that Henry Shlerburne of Piscataway was the heir of this Richard, or some
still earlier Sherburnes, if he or they had no descendants of
their own that could take; which would be hard, for Rich,
ard Sherburne died a good deal more than two hundred
years ago: next also beyond all cavil in a court of law that
they have not left a single descendant in all that long while,
before we can look for the revered Henry to help us out.
After all, then, we have to look up his male line, or else we
can't get the Welds out to save our souls. His eldest son,
Samuel, was killed by the Indians in Maine in 1691: then an
old man. Henry, said to be the eldest son of Samuel, married Dorothy Wentworth, and had three sons, Henry, Sam'l,
John, as we understand: Henry Sherburne, the last one,
had a good many children, and we believe Colonel Samuel
Sherburne of North Portsmouth, commonly called of Christian Shore, was his eldest son; he had a son Henry we
think, who may have left another, which we do not know.
The whole estates can only go to one heir, if we can
get the Welds and the jesuits out of Stonihurst: and though