_Anthony Bridges._--In the Hampshire Visitation of 1622, Harl. MS. 1544.
fo. 25., appears the marriage of Barbara, second daughter of Sir Richard
Pexsall, of Beaurepaire, in co. Southampton, by Ellinor his wife, daughter
of William Pawlett, Marquis of Winchester, to "Anthony Bridges." That Sir
Richard Pexsall died in 1571, is the only clue I have to the date of the
match.
Query, Who was this Anthony Bridges, and did he leave issue?
Is it possible that this is the identical Anthony, third surviving son of
Sir John Bridges, first Baron Chandos of Sudeley, respecting whose fate
there is so much uncertainty? He is presumed to have married a daughter of
Fortescue of Essex, but the collateral evidence on which the supposition is
founded is too slight to be satisfactory. Little is known but that he was
born before 1532; that he was living in 1584 (in which year he was
presented to the living of Meysey Hampton in Gloucestershire, the county in
which he resided); and that he had a son Robert, upon a presumed descent
from whom the late Sir Egerton Brydges founded his well-known claim to the
barony of Chandos of Sudeley.