Notwithstanding the evidence, above afforded, of the social position of the family of which Henry and John Josselyn were members, the present writer failed in tracing it, doubtless from not knowing in which county it had its principal seat. In this uncertainty, it occurred to him to make application to the eminent English antiquary,—the Rev. Joseph Hunter, Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries of London,—to whom he was indebted for former kind attentions; and was favored by this gentleman with such directions as left nothing to be desired. “The Josslines,” writes Mr. Hunter “(the name is written in some variety of orthographies, and now more usually Joceline), are quite one of the old aristocratic families of England, having several knights in the early generations; being admitted into the order of baronets, and subsequently into the peerage.... Their main settlement was in Hertfordshire, at or near the town of Sabridgeworth; and accounts of them may be read in the histories—of which Chauncy’s, Salmon’s, and Clutterbuck’s are the chief—of that county. But a fuller and better account is to be found in the ‘Peerage of Ireland,’ by Mr. Lodge, keeper of the records in the Birmingham Tower, Dublin: 4 vols. 8vo, 1754.”[3] According to Lodge, the family begins with a Sir Egidius, who passed into England in the time of Edward the Confessor, and was descended from “Carolus Magnus, King of France, with more certainty than the houses of Lorraine and Guise.” Of this Sir Egidius was Sir Gilbert de Jocelyn, who accompanied the Conqueror, and had Gilbert—called St. Gilbert, being canonized by Pope Innocent III. in 1202—and Geoffry. To this Geoffry is traced back John Jocelyn, living in 1226; who married Catherine, second daughter and co-heir to Sir Thomas Battell, and had Thomas, who married Maud, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Hide, of Hide Hall in Sabridgeworth, county of Hertford, Knt., by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Sudeley; Baron Sudeley, in the county of Gloucester. He had Thomas Jocelyn, Esq., who married Joan, daughter of John Blunt, and had Ralph, who married Maud, daughter of Sir John Sutton _alias_ Dudley, and had Geoffry of Hide Hall, 1312. Geoffry married Margaret, daughter of Robert Rokell or Rochill, and had Ralph, who married Margaret, daughter and heir to John Patmer, Esq., and had Geoffry (died 1425), who married Catherine, daughter and heir to Sir Thomas Bray, and had four sons and two daughters. Of these, the eldest was Thomas Jocelyn, Esq., living in the reign of Edward IV., who married Alice, daughter of Lewis Duke of Dukes in Essex, Esq., by his wife Anne, daughter of John Cotton, Esq., and had issue George, his heir, called Jocelyn the Courtier, who married Maud, daughter and heir to Edmond Bardolph,—Lord Bardolph,—and had one daughter and three sons. John Jocelyn, Esq.,—“auditor of the augmentations, upon the dissolution of the abbeys by King Henry