The most distant ancestor traced in this line is Thomas Dumbrell, tenant of Antye Farm, Wivelsfield, near today's Burgess Hill. Thomas wasn't the only Dumbrell in that part of mid-Sussex at the time. For example, John and Henry Dumbrell were living at Fletching, about five miles away, at the same time. In the mid-sixteenth century there were also Dumbrells nearby at Lindfield, Cuckfield, Nuthurst and Horsham, and it is quite probable that the Wivelsfield branch were related to Richard Dumbrell of Basden (now Bawlsdon) at Rottingdean, since Thomas' son, William, cites this family in his will.
Nor were they poor. Antye Farm (the name 'Antye' means 'at the high enclosure') was acquired by Thomas Dumbrell's family in about 1500 from the Hentys, whose name is derived from the property. This was the one of many substantial farms in Wivelsfield at the time, although the nearby manor house, 'Great Otehall', and 'Theobalds', an adjacent farm, were both larger. Antye Farm (sometimes called 'Hantye') had been built in the late fourteenth century as an open hall house, possibly replacing a previous settlement called Entenie that was given to the monks of Lewes Priory before 1150. The farmhouse still stands today, much altered. According to tax records, Antye was owned by John and Robert Hentye in 1327. Their descendants, Ralph and Walter, paid 12d tax on the property at the poll tax collection of 1379. The last Hentye to own the property, before it was acquired by the Dumbrells, was Isabel, who assumed the lease on the death of her sister Lucy in 1481. The family then moved away, to Littlehampton and West Tarring on the Sussex coast, and so Antye came into the possession of the Dumbrells.
Thomas Dumbrell was a yeoman, as indeed were many of the other members of the family in mid-Sussex, and only one step down from a gentleman. Yeomen generally held property in copy from the Lord of the Manor. That is to say, the tenant yeoman held a copy of the agreement made with his Lord, and was therefore known as a copyholder. In Sussex, land leased was generally passed down unhindered from one generation to the next, usually through the youngest son. This was known as the 'Borough English' form of succession. On the death of a tenant, the Lord would exact a heriot, a sort of death duty, from the heir, but in other respects the succession would pass unchallenged by the Lord, who would usually be on good terms with his yeoman farmers. Often the heriot was paid in kind; in the case of Antye at the beginning of the seventeenth century, it was a young bullock.
Very little is known about Thomas. The value of his property was assessed at £400 in 1524, when the government was raising money as the result of heightened tension between the English and the French in 1522, and he paid £10 in tax. This is recorded in the Lay Subsidy Rolls of that date. Thomas died some time before 31 May 1536, and his widow Joan took over the property until her death in that year. She would have had the right to remain at Antye when the property passed to Thomas's son, William. This was because of her 'right of widow's bench', a succession law which allowed the widow to continue to live at the family property after her husband's death. 1
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