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Kite
Kite or Keyt or Kete Family History
Virginia Anne Kite in her 1908 "A fragmentary sketch of the family from its earleist times to the present day" records the legend that the family name derived from a victorious battle against the danes in the time of Aldred the Great (849-899), King of the West Saxons. A bird of prey, the Red Kite, having been seen before and after the battle, was deemed to have been a good omen and the victorious chief was thereafter known as Kite. How much truth there is in this legend it is difficult to tell although V.A. Kite also mentions that it was recorded in the Domesday Book and this should be capable of verification.
What is without doubt is that the family were landowners in Dorset and Gloucestershire for many centuries and that arms were granted to William Keyt of Chesilborne in Dorset by Robert Cooke, Clarenceaux King of Arms in 1589, and recorded again by Henry St George in the Visitation of Dorset in 1623.
The name is spelt variously as Kite, Keyt, Keyte or Kete (spellings not being standardised until the middle of the 19th century) and different branches of the family adopted different spellings.
A branch of the family was settled at Ebrington in Gloucestershire for 300 years until the death of the death of Sir Robert Keyt, 5th baronet, in 1784. William Keyte famously left a bequest to provide the milk of 10 good cows to the poor of Ebrington under the terms of his 1632 will. This practise continued until 1952 when it was commuted into a money trust which continues to this day.
William's eldest son, John, raised a troop of horse at his own expense to support the king and was rewarded with a Baronetcy upon the restoration of Charles II to the throne.
Although some sources indicate that the Cromwellian admiral, Sir George Kite (born 1625), was of the Ebrington branch there is no mention of him in the family tree recorded in Burke's "A genealogical and heraldic history of extinct and dormant baronetcies". It is possible that he was a nephew or cousin of the William Keyt (he of the milkl charity above) with whom Burke starts his entry.
Sir George Kite was second in command to Admiral Penn (father of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania) in the taking of Jamaica in 1655 and his son John emigrated to America in 1681, where he became a close friend of William Penn. This John Kite is regarded as the founder of the Kite family in America.
The arms granted to Robert Keyt in 1589 were described in the visitation of 1623 as being:
"Quarterly 1 and 4, azure, a chevron between 3 kites heads erased or; 2 and 3, argent a chevron engrailed gules, between 3 leapards faces sable".
Whereas the arms shown in Burkes extinct and dormant baronetcies is merely:
"Azure, a chevron between three kites heads erased or".
This later description palinly being the Kite shield. The 2nd and 3rd quarters of the Dorset branch being merged as a result of marriage with another family.
But it is in the use of the crests that the branches vary. This was (and remains) a common means of differentiating different branches of the same family.
The Dorset branch is described in the visitation as using the crest of a "Unicorn head erased argent, armed or, and gorged with a belt gules, buckled and garished of the second".
The Ebrington Baronets used a Kites head erased and the descendants of Sir George used a Kite displayed.
SNBM