With two families, each having branches spread throughout South Lincolnshire for several centuries, it could be expected that they would have made contact with each other from time to time, particularly as the Everards lived in the village of Welby for about a hundred years. However, Alfred Welby's researches do not record any Welbys in Welby after the end of the 14th Century whereas it was not until 1595 that the Everards bought the Manor of Welby from Richard Thorold.

The first recorded contact between the families is in 1677 when William Welby of Denton bought the Manor of Welby from William Everett the great, great, uncle of Samuel Everard of Leasingham. It is possible that the two families were in touch earlier as Richard Welby (1606-1663), a younger son of the Denton branch, founded a branch in Heydour (about three miles east of Welby) and Alfred Welby records his wife as "probably the widow of an Everett"; unfortunately there is no Everett in the Everard pedigree whose widow could have given Richard Welby his first son in 1641.

I have found no other recorded contact until 1868 when William Earle Welby of Denton (later the 4th Bart) was elected M.P. for South Lincolnshire after a contested campaign for which Robert Everard of Fulney was Chairman of the Conservative Committee. [I discovered this from a Richard Olney, a graduate from Magdelen College, Oxford, who in 1967 was writing a thesis on rural politics in the 19th Century, in South Lincolnshire, and had approached me for information about Robert Everard].

In February 1870 Edward Montague Earle Welby, a barrister and younger brother of the Candidate, married Sarah Elizabeth Everard, the only child of the Chairman of the Committee, and it is not unreasonable to assume that he met his future wife when he was helping his elder brother in his 1868 Election Campaign.

Edward and Sarah Welby lived at Norton House, near Sheffield where he was Stipendiary Magistrate, and had five children-Edward Everard Earle (1870), Glynne Everard Earle (1872), Ciceley Elizabeth (Tweedie) (1875), Margery Sarah (1878), Hugh Robert Earle (1885). They also owned a house, Yew Lodge in High Street, Spalding and several farms in the Spalding area; after Sarah's death in 1909 Edward moved to Yew Lodge until he died in 1926.

A further linking of the two families occurred in 1915 when Hugh Welby, Edward and Sarah;s youngest son, married his second cousin, Dorothea Margaret, the grand-daughter of Mary Green who was a younger sister of Sarah Everard, Hugh Welby's grandmother.

After the death of her father, Robert Everard, in 1880 Sarah Welby enclosed with iron railings a plot of land at the eastern end of the ruined Chapel of St. Nicholas at Wykeham, which was consecrated by the Bishop of Lincoln as a family burial ground, and in 1888 formed a Trust of which the present Trustees are myself, my brother Christopher and my son Glynne. The burials within the plot are:-