​ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT

Upon Elizabeth I's elevation of Edmund, three years after the commissioners' visitation, the Marians seemed unaware of his significant role alongside Elizabeth I's religious settlement negotiators. Along with eight other Protestant negotiators, he successfully solidified the Church of England in 1559. Additionally, this may explain Herald Robert Cook, Clarence King of Arms in 1569, omitted important details from the genealogical table regarding his father's paternal cousins, John Junior, Richard, and Giles Gest, as well as Elizabeth Gest and Agnes Corby, all connected to the Lollards heresy trials in Coventry in 1511 and 1512. Considering Edmund’s surname and his roles as Archde of Canterbury and later Bishop of Rochester, it’s plausible that the Marian commissioners linked him to the heretics (premature Protestants) in 1556/7 and suspected to be a direct descendant of Guestling clerics from the 1066 conquest in Hastings. His sustained presence in the southeast of England rather than Midlands may suggest support from his paternal family, who valued his efforts to uphold their ecclesical legacy while subtly advancing the reformist agenda of his Gest relatives—all while concealing the Lollards of Coventryesy prosecutions involving his Guest family and their extensive ecclesial history from the Marian commissioners, a matter Elizabeth I likely to keep hidden to aid Edmund in negotiating with Rome, supported by her herald's office and network of genealogists. Inglesdew, in 1858 notes that little is known about Edmund's family, pointing out the unusual absence of parentage information Church other authoritative sources from that time. He mentions that Edmund's mother is referred to asmother" in his will, and through his correspondence with brothers-in-law,dew's detective work ultimately identifies Edmund’s father, Thomas, as married to the sister of Dr. Brandisby of North Yorkshire.