Origin of the Name Withers
The
Withers family history was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives. Withers is a name of great antiquity which has a number of variants including Wither, Wythers and Wyther. This name is of English descent and is found in many ancient manuscripts in that country. Examples of such are an Agnes Wyther of County Cambridgeshire who was recorded in the 'Hundred Rolls', England, in the year 1273. A Richard Wyther of County Oxfordshire was also recorded in the same year in this ancient document. A James Wythers and Ann Graye were married at St. Michaels Church, Cornhill, in 1590. Names were recorded in these ancient documents to make it easier for their overlords to collect taxes and to keep records of the population at any given time. When the overlords acquired lands by either force or gifts from their rulers, they created charters of ownership for themselves and their vassals.
In Ireland this name and its variants were introduced into Ulster Province by settlers who arrived from England and Scotland, especially during the seventeenth century. It was the 'Plantations of Ireland' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that marked the end of Gaelic supremacy in Ireland. While the influx of settlers in the wake of the earlier Anglo-Norman invasion of the twelfth century resulted in a full integration into Irish society of the new arrivals, the same never occurred with the Ulster Planters who maintained their own distinct identity.
The Withers coat of arms came into existence centuries ago. The process of creating coats of arms (also often called family crests) began in the eleventh century although a form of Proto-Heraldry may have existed in some countries prior to this. The new art of Heraldry made it possible for families and even individual family members to have their very own coat of arms, including all Withers descendants.