The first recorded member of the Fettiplace family was Adam Feteplace or Fettiplace, Mayor of Oxford for eleven terms between 1245 and 1268. His family lived at North Denchworth in Berkshire. An increase in their status occurred with the marriage of Thomas Fettiplace, of East Shefford, Berkshire and Beatrix, widow of Gilbert, 5th Lord Talbot; she was a probable illegitimate descendant of the Royal House of Portugal. Their tomb is in the parish church. Their three sons were William, of Stokenchurch, Oxfordshire, James, of Maidencourt, Berkshire, and John. William Fettiplace's only child, Sybella, was great-grandmother of Sir Edward Unton, who married Anne Seymour, Countess of Warwick, cousin of King Edward VI. James Fettiplace's last descendant after four generations was mother of Sir William Dunch, who married Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell, and aunt of the regicide Oliver Cromwell. John Fettiplace was a London draper, who became a member of the household of Henry VI and carried the insignia of the Order of the Garter to the King of Portugal. He possessed the manors of East Shefford and of New Langport, Kent. John Fettiplace had four sons- Richard, Anthony, Thomas, and William, and a daughter, Margaret. From Richard and Anthony descend all branches of the landed Fettiplace family aside from the original family of North Denchworth; all of these branches were extinct by 1806.
Richard Fettiplace, of Shefford, married Elizabeth, daughter of William Besils, of Besselsleigh, Berkshire. This estate remained in the family for five generations, then sold on the extinction of this line; a branch of this family were the Fettiplaces of Fernham, Berkshire, also extinct by 1720. One of its members was the politician John Fettiplace.
William Fettiplace, of Letcombe, Berkshire, married Elizabeth Waring, widow of John Kentwood, but had no issue.
The main Fettiplace family of North Denchworth, from which all the above branches descend, was extinct in the male line at the death of Thomas Fettiplace of Denchworth, Pusey and Charney in the reign of King James I; Thomas's sister and heiress, Margaret, married Christopher, a younger son of Alexander Fettiplace of Swinbrook and Childrey, and the North Denchworth estate was sold in around 1809 to a farmer named Frogley. The Fettiplace name passed twice in the female line descended from Anthony Fettiplace, and was extinct even in that regard in 1806 on the death of Richard Gorges Fettiplace.
American branch
Philip Phettiplace, who settled at Portsmouth, Rhode Island by 1671, was great-grandson of Walter Fettiplace, of Southampton, an eighth-generation descendant of Adam Fettiplace, of North Denchworth, Mayor of Oxford. Walter Fettiplace was Mayor of Southampton in 1463, and M.P. for the borough in 1472. The Phettiplace coat of arms was differenced from the other lines by adding two gold scallop shells to the red shield with two silver chevrons. There is a record of two Fettiplace brothers, William and Michael, arriving in Jamestown in 1607 with Captain John Smith. However, as adventurers in the employ of John Smith, they returned with him when he was injured in 1609.
Elinor Fettiplace's ''Receipt Book''
, wife of Sir Richard Fettiplace, of Appleton Manor, Berkshire wrote a Book of Receipts in 1604. It was first published in 1986, the manuscript having been inherited by the husband of the editor, Hilary Spurling. The compilation gives an intimate view of Elizabethan era cookery and domestic life in an aristocratic country household.
Memorials
The two triple family monuments at Swinbrook Church in Oxfordshire, with sets of effigies ranged on shelves above each other, are fine examples of English Renaissance and Baroque funerary art. There is a monument to John Fettiplace and an inscription thanking Richard Fettiplace at the parish church of St Laurence, Appleton, Oxfordshire.
