Ralph de Trafford

  General Notes:

~The Visitation of the County Palatine of Lancaster, Made in the Year 1664-5, Part III, p. 315

  Noted events in his life were:

• Background Information. ⁸⁰⁴
Randolph, who is mentioned in deeds to "Radulphus filius Radulphi," which it appears that Randolph, the was then dead and had flourished in King Cante, the Dane his time, about the year 1030, and perhaps died after in St. Edward the Confessor his time, about the year 1050. He did not have a surname, as then few Saxon nobilitie or gentry had. Randolphus was Lord of this family in age (his son, Robert, grandchild to Randle, being then at man's estate), at or immediately after the conquest and about the year 1080, Randolph and his son, received the King's peace and protection from Sir Hamon de Massey, Baron of Dunham Massey.

~Burke's A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. IV pp. 247-248

• Background Information. ⁷²⁰
Randoph was the lord of Trafford at the time of the Norman conquest of England. He and his son, had a pardon and protection granted to them about the year 1080 by Hamon, the Norman, baron of Dunham Massey. The crest of the family at the time was a laboring man with a flail in his hand, in the act of threshing a sheaf of wheat, as well as the ambiguous Motto, "Now thus." The commonly-accespted interpretation of this motto is, that the thresher, alluding to the head of the flail falling sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, thus indicated his belief that that was the safest course to pursue in the then disturbed condition of the kingdom.

~Families of Lancashire and Cheshire, pgs. 167-168