Derbyshire (England) -- Antiquities; Derbyshire (England) -- History
occasions to obtain an admission from him that it had been included in
the Lightbirch Estate, first, by sending a servant with a document for
him to sign, then by coming himself, on which occasion he became so
pressing that he had found it necessary to leave him and to refuse to
speak again with him on the matter, and finally by requesting Thomas
Auby, who happened to be at Blackbroke on other business, to go to
Lichfield and endeavour to obtain the admission he had himself failed
in obtaining.
The next step was taken on the 28th of August following, when Henry
Bradshawe, who as his father’s son and heir had been in possession
of the estates, including the land in dispute, since the year 1483,
obtained a warrant against Reynold Legh to answer for a trespass
“upon a meadow in Bowden called Holmedowe,” which was followed by an
order made to the Sheriff, May 1st, 1499, at the instance of Reynold
Legh himself, to summon a jury to try the case. The jury, which was
composed of men well known in the county, such as Peter Pole and John
Gell, of Hopton, decided in favour of Henry Bradshawe of Bradshaw,
who was thenceforward left as undisputed owner of the field, which
is in the possession of his descendant to-day. Five years before
William Bradshawe’s death, his son Henry had been practically master
at Bradshaw, probably because his father had become conscious of the
infirmities of age, for he must have been exceedingly old when he was
troubled on his death-bed, in 1483, with the dispute about the Hollow
Meadow. A lease had been executed by Wm. Bradshaw,[43] which seems to
have been in lieu of a will, letting for twenty-one years to his son
“Hare,” “his place calde ye Bradsha, and all ye lade and meydo [land
and meadow] with ye apurtenances logyg yereto [belonging thereto],
except a wode calde ye Greyve Crofte,” but in making arrangements
for the maintenance of his widow, he stipulates that “unless it
plesse her bettur to be in any odr plase, ye seyde Hare shall fynde
and suffyshundeley kepe his Modr at things to hyr necessare to hyr
degre.” He also arranges for his son to relieve him of the worry of
paying the King’s taxes in the words, “and ye seyde Hare to pey ye
Kyge his dute for ye whole lynelode” [income]. He also gives to “ye
seyde Hare all his stuffe of Howsholde, wit all things of his yt
longus to husbodry” [that belongs to husbandry]. This curious lease
is dated at Chapel-in-ye-Frythe, 18 Edward IV. (1478). William’s wife
was Elizabeth, a member of the family of Kyrke, of Whitehough, near
Chapel-en-le-Frith[44].
[43] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxiv., p. 42.
[44] In possession of the writer; printed in full in _Derbyshire
Archæological Journal_, vol. xxv., p. 58.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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