Without yielding implicit credence to the handsome pedigree of the Marryats supplied by Mrs Lean, the novelist's daughter, we may give a glance in passing to the first-fruits of this family tree. They-- naturally--came over with the Conqueror, and emerged from obscurity under Stephen as the proud "possessors of much lands at the village of Meryat, Ashton Meryat, and elsewhere in Somersetshire ... One Nicotas de Maryet is deputed to collect the ransom of Richard Coeur de Leon through the county of Somerset ... In the reign of Edward I., Sir John de Maryet is called to attend the Great Parliament; in that of Edward II., his son is excommunicated for embowelling his deceased wife; 'a fancy,' says the county historian, 'peculiar to the knightly family of Meryat.'" Mrs Lean quotes records of other Meryat "hearts" to which an honourable burial has been accorded. The house of Meryat finally lost its property on the fall of Lady Jane Grey, to whom it had descended through the female line.
Captain Marryat belonged to the Suffolk branch of the family, of whom "one John de Maryat had the honour of dancing in a masque before the Virgin Queen at Trinity College, Cambridge ... was sent to aid the Huguenots in their wars in France ... escaped the massacre of St Bartholemew and, in 1610, returned to England." Here he married "Mary, the daughter and heiress of Daniel Luke, of the Covent Garden (a rank Puritan family in _Hudibras_), and again settled in his paternal county of Suffolk." Less partial biographers neglect to trace the Marryats beyond this Huguenot officer, who is described by them as a refugee.
Whatever may be the truth of these matters, it is certain that during the 17th and 18th centuries the Maryats were a respectable, middle-class Puritan family--ministers, doctors, and business men. In the days of the merry monarch a John Marryat became distinguished as a "painful preacher," and was twice expelled from his livings for non-conformity. Captain Marryat's grandfather was a good doctor, and his father, Joseph Marryat of Wimbledon House, was an M.P., chairman for the committee of Lloyd's, and colonial agent for the island of Grenada--a substantial man, who refused a baronetcy, and was honoured by an elegy from Campbell. He married Charlotte Geyer, or Von Geyer, a Hessian of good descent.