GENERATION 14

GENERATION 13

Biography

RICHARD MOODY, of Moulton, Suffolk, England, yeoman, the testator of Jan. 14, 1572/73, and Feb. 2, of the same year, is the earliest Moody from whom the descent of the New England settler has been proved. He died Apr. 28, 1574, and was buried at Moulton on the same day. Moulton is a parish in the western part of Suffolk County, on the border of Cambridgeshire.

He married ANNE PANNEL, who survived him and married secondly, at Moulton, Sep. 6, 1574, Edward Coult, Gentleman. ANNE was buried at Moulton on Mar. 14, 1576/77.

RICHARD was dealing with a tenement in Moulton in the autumn of 1558 and purchased lands there in 1562 and lands in Moulton and Gaseley, a parish two miles east from Moulton, in 1572. On or after 1558 he brought a suit in Chancery against Thomas Burgeant, to recover the title deeds relating to a leasehold house and lands in Moulton, called Lanwades. He evidently acquired a considerable landed estate in western Suffolk, chiefly by purchase. He lived in a house called Fryettes, in Moulton, which he had bought from the executors of a certain Roger Fryett.

Besides his lands in Moulton and Gaseley, he had leasehold and other land in Cavenham and Kentford, both in Suffolk County, and a flock of four hundred sheep at Isleham, Cambridgeshire, and land at Okingbury, Wessen, and Illington in Huntingdon County. The only lands held by him in chief of the Crown seem to have been twenty acres in Millwayefelde, in Moulton, which were apparently the lands mentioned in the Chancery suit, for they were acquired from a Burgeant, Gentleman.

RICHARD made two wills in Jan. and Feb. of 1572/73. Under both wills, the house called Fryettes was to go to ANNE, his wife, but under the second will the property would pass on to the eldest son, GEORGE, upon ANNE's death. In both wills the care of his children was left in the hands of several friends.