Nooks and Corners of Lancashire and Cheshire.: A Wayfarer's Notes in the Palatine Counties, Historical, Legendary, Genealogical, and Descriptive.Croston, James
History
Nooks and Corners of Lancashire and Cheshire.: A Wayfarer's Notes in the Palatine Counties, Historical, Legendary, Genealogical, and Descriptive.
Croston, James
Cheshire (England); Lancashire (England)
It must be confessed that the President, with all his “rare modesty”
and patriotism, was not so self-denying but that he looked sharply
after the main chance. On the 19th June, 1649, Parliament voted him a
sum of £1,000, and on the same day ordered that it should be referred
to a committee to consider how he was to be put into possession of the
value of £2,000 a year, to be settled as an inheritance upon him and
his heirs for ever.
Wealth and honours were literally showered upon him, and for a time the
history of the Government was little else than a history of Bradshaw.
On the 30th June he was re-appointed to the office of Chief Justice
of Chester, Humphrey Macworth, of Shrewsbury, who afterwards acted as
President of the court-martial which tried Lord Derby, being named
as his deputy. On the 15th July a Bill passed through Parliament
settling £2,000 a year on him and his heirs, and nine days later (July
24th) another £2,000 per annum was granted to him and them out of the
sequestrated estates of the Earl of St Albans at Somerhill, in Kent,
and those of Lord Cottington in Wiltshire, the latter including the
famous Fonthill. This last-named grant was in all probability the one
referred to in the order of June 19, when a committee was ordered to
consider how an annual payment of that amount could be settled.
Four days after these grants were made, an Act was passed constituting
him Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, an office that subsequently,
when others were abolished, was on his account specially retained, and
on the 2nd April, 1652, secured to him. His name appears on the list of
Justices of the Peace for his native county in 1650; in the same year
he was again named of the Council of State, and retained his office
of President. The following letter, extracted from the State papers,
is interesting as showing the relations existing between Bradshaw and
Cromwell, and the estimation in which he was held by the Lord General:—
My Lord,—I return you my humble and heartie thanks for your
late noble and friendly letter, whereby I have the comfort and
assurance of your lordship’s faire interpretation of my past,
and (so I dare call them) well ment actions, which I shall not
desyre to account for or justify to any man lyving so soon as to
yourself; of whome I shall ever have that esteeme as becomes me
to have of one who daylie approves himself religion’s and his
countrey’s best friend, and who may justly challenge a tribute of
observance from all that syncerely wysh them well, in which number
I shall hope ever to be found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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