Henry Bradshaw the younger, following the example of his father, also married an heiress, thus further adding to the territorial possessions, as well as to the social status, of his house, his wife being Catherine, the younger of the two daughters and co-heirs of Ralph Winnington, the last male representative of a family seated for seven generations at Offerton Hall, a building still standing near the highroad midway between Stockport and Marple, though now shorn of much of its former dignity. The registers of Stockport show that they were married there on the 4th February, 1593. To them were born four sons and two daughters. William, the eldest, died in infancy. With Henry, born in 1600, and John, born in 1602, we are more immediately concerned, for it is round them that the interest and the associations of Marple chiefly gather. The elder Bradshaw, the founder of the Marple line, died in 1619-20, when Henry, his son, who had then been a widower sixteen years, succeeded to the family estates. No records of his private life have been preserved, but it may not be unreasonably assumed that, after the death of his wife, and as he did not remarry, he lived in comparative retirement, leading the life of an unostentatious country gentleman, improving his estate, and supervising the education of his children. Two years after he had entered upon the possession of his inheritance, that important functionary the Herald made his official visitation of Cheshire, when the gentlemen and esquires of the county were called upon to register their descents and show their claim to the arms they severally bore; and it is worthy of note, as indicating his indifference to, or disdain of, the “noble science,” that though, as we have seen, of ancient and honourable lineage and entitled to bear arms, Henry Bradshaw did not obey the Herald’s summons,[6] probably “feeling assured,” as Macaulay said of the old Puritan, “that if his name was not found in the Registers of Heralds, it was recorded in the Book of Life; and hence originated his contempt for territorial distinctions, accomplishments, and dignities.” [Note 6: Whilst the head of the Cheshire Bradshaws risked the displeasure of the Herald by neglecting his summons, his kinsmen in Lancashire, who were steady and decided Royalists, with more regard for constituted authority, attended the Court, entered their descents, and, in further proof of his right to the honourable distinction of arms, John Bradshaw, of Bradshaw, produced a precious letter from Henry Percy, the first Earl of Northumberland, K.G., the father of Hotspur, to his “well-beloved friende” John Bradshaw, a progenitor who had probably served and fought at Chevy Chase and elsewhere in the reign of the second Richard.]