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)
In his petition to the Council of State, praying to be paid the full
sum of £2,188 11s. 4d., Richard Bradshaw states that he had “suffered
the loss of £5,000 in the late wars of this nation, without any
reparation for the same, and for above seventeen years freely exposed
his life at home and abroad in the service of the State; that the same
was disbursed out of his affection to his country, whilst he resided as
public minister in foreign parts, and, if not paid, he should be now,
at his return, rent from his small estate, it being more than he hath
got in the service of the Commonwealth.”
On the 9th March, 1659-60, the Council directed the amount to be paid,
and on the 12th his accounts were ordered for that purpose to be laid
before Parliament. It does not appear, however, to have been received,
for on the 23rd and 31st he is again found petitioning Thurloe on the
matter, and in the changes that were then taking place it is doubtful
if he ever got anything. Whether, as he feared, he was “rent from
his small estate” or not is not recorded, but it is evident that in
a pecuniary sense he was not so successful as his kinsman, the Lord
President; yet he was a man of much energy and ability, and his letters
give an interesting account of the political affairs of foreign Courts
at the time. He appears to have been continually short of money through
the Government remaining indebted to him, and this fact rather suggests
the idea that Cromwell, who had already broken with John Bradshaw,
desired to hold him as a kind of hostage, and keep him wherever he
chose to place him.
With a portion of the wealth acquired under John Bradshaw’s will,
Henry, his nephew, in 1693, purchased Bradshaw Hall, in Lancashire,
which, as previously stated, had for many generations been the
residence of another branch of the family, that had then become extinct
in the male line. It is a singular fact that within a comparatively
short period, nearly all, if not all, the branches of the Bradshaw
family became extinct in the male line—the Bradshaws of Haigh, of
Bradshaw, and of Aspull, in Lancashire; of Bradshaw Edge, and of
Barton, in Derbyshire; and finally, as we shall see, of Marple, in
Cheshire, the latter by the death of the Lord President’s grand-nephew
in 1743.
The subsequent history of the Bradshaws is soon told. Henry, who
inherited the patrimonial estates as well as the bulk of his uncle’s
property, married Elizabeth (erroneously called Magdalene in Ormerod’s,
Forster’s, and Burke’s pedigrees), one of the daughters and co-heirs
of Thomas Barcroft, by whom, on the death of her father in 1688, he
acquired the demesne of Barcroft, in Whalley parish, Lancashire, with
the hall, an ancient mansion dating from the time of Henry VIII. This
Henry made considerable additions to Marple, and erected a great
portion of the outbuildings, as evidenced by the frequent repetitions
of his and his wife’s initials
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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