[Illustration] The name is derived from Drogo or Dru, and is
supposed to be Norman. The first proved ancestor of the family
however is William Drewe, who married an heiress of Prideaux of
Orcheston in this county, and appears to have lived about the
beginning of the fourteenth century. His son was of Sharpham, also
in Devonshire. The present seat was erected by Sir Thomas Drewe in
1610.
Younger branches of this family were of Drew's Cliffe and High Hayne
in Newton St. Cyres.
See Lysons, cxliii. and 266; Westcote's Pedigrees, 582-3; and the
Topographer and Genealogist, ii. 209, for the Drews of Ireland,
descended from a second son of the house of Drew's Cliffe, who came
to Ireland, and settled at Meanus, in the county of Kerry, in 1633;
see also Prince's Worthies, 1st ed. p. 249.
ARMS.--_Ermine, a lion passant gules_.
Present Representative, Edward Simcoe Drewe, Esq.