The Sneyds, a thirteenth-century cadet of the Audleys, purchased Keele from the Crown in 1540 after the Hospitallers. Ralph Sneyd built the first Keele Hall in 1580. Their scythe (a pun on sned) and fleur-de-lys (Poitiers honour, claimed for an ancestor beside James, 2nd Baron) are a heraldic affidavit of proximity — not a marshalling of the gold fret.
Keele University now keeps the uncalendared deeds. The last Sneyd in the hall, Colonel Ralph Sneyd ('Sporting Ralph'), died childless in 1949. The house became a campus. The name did not die with the house: in the colonies it is written Snead. Keziah Snead is the woman the petitioner names as the Watkins-marriage bridge; Granberry Watkins is the connecting link she names next.
Walk the ridge as a cadet archive, not as a second barony. A petitioner starts in this meadow because the senior line turned the neighbouring dirt into a dignity, and the cadet kept the paper.
