File:-2020-09-19 Memorial to William and Elizabeth Rant, Parish church of Saint Margaret, Thorpe Market.JPG

English: A wall mounted memorial to the memory of William Rant and his wife Elizabeth de Grey inside the Parish church of Saint Margaret in the village of Thorpe Market, Norfolk. Elizabeth was the eldest daughter of James de Grey (died 1665) of Merton Hall, Norfolk, (called here "Martin, Norfolk") by his wife Elizabeth Stutevile, a daughter of Sir Martin Stutevile of Dalham in Suffolk. Elizabeth's brother was w:William de Grey (1652-1687) of Merton Hall, MP, the grandfather of William de Grey, 1st Baron Walsingham. The ledger stone of James de Grey (died 1665) with monumental brasses is in Merton Church, Norfolk. See Farrer, Edmund, Church Heraldry of Norfolk, Vol 2 (1889), pp.140-1[1]

Arms: Ermine, on a fess sable three lions rampant or (Rant) (Burke, Sir Bernard, The General Armory, London, 1884, p.839) impaling Azure, a fess between two chevrons or (de Grey of Martin, Norfolk) (Burke, p.428 "Grey of Ilchester, Norfolk", with "Grey of Merton, Norfolk" Azure, a fess or between two chevrons ermine). The arms used by William de Grey, 1st Baron Walsingham and his successors were entirely different, namely a difference of the arms of the ancient noble family of Grey of Grays Thurrock, Essex, Marquess of Dorset, etc. (Montague-Smith, P.W. (ed.), Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage, Kelly's Directories Ltd, Kingston-upon-Thames, 1968, p.1129).

It is possible that the Grey family of Merton abandoned their paternal arms in favour of the chevron arms intending to adopt the arms of the mediaeval knight w:Robert FitzWalter (d.1235), who appears on horseback displaying these arms in the south aisle east window of St Peter's Church, Merton, Norfolk. At top is a roundel in 13th century style showing the mediaeval knight w:Robert FitzWalter (d.1235), feudal baron of Little Dunmow, Essex, mounted on a horse, circumscribed in Latin ROBERTUS FILIUS WALTERI, and displaying the arms Azure, a fess between two chevrons or, later adopted by the de Grey family of Merton Hall, as is visible on their monuments. However the arms of Robert FitzWalter are usually gived as Or, a fess between two chevrons gules. Robert Fitzwalter was one of the leaders of the baronial opposition against King John, and one of the twenty-five sureties of Magna Carta.

Robert FitzWalter's immense English landholdings included the manor of Merton in Norfolk, which was sub-infeudated to the Baynard family. Merton eventually descended to Sir Thomas de Grey, who married the heiress Isabell Baynard, which family had held it from FitzWalter. The arms of Baynard are similar to FitzWalter, their feudal overlord. and it seems that de Grey of Merton intended to adopt the arms of Baynard, given in Burke, p.60 as Sable, a fess between two chevrons or ("Baynard of Blagdon, Somerset")

Text per Francis Blomefield, 'Hundred of Wayland: Merton', in An Essay Towards A Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 2 (London, 1805), pp. 298-312 [2]:

At the Norman Conquest it fell to the Conqueror, who gave it Ralph Bainard, Baignar, or Baynard, (fn. 2) one of his principal Normans, who came over with him, (along with Hatestuna, or Bunwell manor, which always passed as this did, till it was sold by the De Greys to the Buxtons,) he left it to Juga Baynard, his widow, who was succeeded by Jeffry Baynard, her son and heir, who was succeeded by Will. Baynard, who taking part with Helias Earl of Mayne, Philip de Braose, William Malet, and other conspirators, against Henry I. lost his barony of Baynard's Castle, which, upon his forfeiture, was given by the King to Robert, a younger son of Richard Fitz-Gilbert, progenitor to the ancient Earls of Clare, from which Robert, the noble family of the Fitz-Walters descended, of which family the manors of Merton, and Hadeston or Bunwell were always held, as of Baynard's castle, the head of the barony, by a younger branch of the Baynard family, to which these manors were given before the forfeiture, so that they were never forfeited, but continued in that branch, till Isabell, a coheiress of it, carried them to Sir Thomas de Grey, her husband.