WINTERSHALL, Francis

Francis was almost certainly a member of the principal branch of the Wintershall family which had been established at Wintershall, near Bramley in Surrey, since the mid thirteenth century, and shared his name with an ancestor, who held the manor in the early fourteenth century. It is likely that he was a son or other close relative of John Wintershall, an esquire prominent in the county’s representation. One of John Wintershall’s younger sons, Robert Wintershall*, represented Guildford in 1429 and 1433, but Francis’s unusual Christian name makes a clerical error in the return of 1431 seem unlikely, even if no other details of his career have come to light.1 O. Manning and W. Bray, Surr. ii. 84-6; VCH Surr. iii. 84-85, 392-3.