Nicholas Conyngham Tindal - Background

Background

Sir Nicholas's father, Robert Tindal, was an attorney in Chelmsford, where his family had lived at Coval Hall for three generations. His great-grandfather, Rev Nicolas Tindal, was the translator and continuer of the History of England by Paul de Rapin — a seminal work in its day — and he was also the great great grandnephew of Dr Matthew Tindal, the deist and author of 'Christianity as Old as the Creation' (known as the 'deist's bible') and descendant of Thomas Clifford, 1st Baron Clifford of Chudleigh.

Sir Nicholas's branch of the Tindal family were descended from Rev John Tindal, Rector of Bere Ferris in Devon during the Commonwealth of England and who has been claimed as the son either of Dean Tyndall or of (his father) Sir John Tyndall, both of Mapplestead, Essex. John Nichols, in the 18th c, set out a genealogy maintaining that the family derived from Baron Adam de Tyndale of Langley Castle, Northumberland, a tenant-in-chief of Henry II, though this has been challenged Through this line, Tindal would have been collaterally descended from William Tyndale, translator of the bible.

Tindal was descended from a number of great legal figures, all of whom were members of Lincoln's Inn. Sir John Fortescue, was a great medieval jurist and Lord Chancellor of Henry VI of England; Sir William Yelverton was an earlier Lord Chief Justice of England; Sir Roger Manwood was an Elizabethan Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer; and his nephew, John Manwood, Sir Nicholas's great great great grandfather, was the author of 'the Forest Laws'.

(See also Tyndall.)