According
to his prob etat
('proof of age') Adam Bostock, the
fifth in this account to be so named, was born at Bostock on, or about, 6 March
1412. (The pedigree in Burke�s Landed
Gentry gives 22 February 1413).
The proof of age, taken at Tarporley on 17 April 1433, is a most interesting
document. It tells us that the senior member of the jury, William Bostock of
Huntingdon, then aged sixty years, gave evidence that Adam was aged twenty-one
on 5 March 1433 and that he remembered that Adam was born at Bostock and
baptised in Davenham church. He knew these facts because he married Alice
Mulneton in the February following Adam�s birth and that the details of the
marriage were written in the missal at the church. Robert Waryhull, aged
fifty-five, and Thomas Bateson, aged fifty-seven, agreed and stated that they
knew the facts because on the day of the baptism they were with Ranulph le
Mainwaring at Davenham for a �love-day� between him and Sir John Carrington.
David Bostock, aged fifty-four, Geoffrey Starky, aged forty-seven, Nicholas
Brett, aged sixty and Ranulph Bostock, aged forty-nine, also confirmed Adam�s
age. These men remembered that not long after Adam�s birth a Richard Hilmon of
Davenham was infected by disease the cause of which was examined in the
Coroner�s Court. The remaining jurors gave evidence that the details of the
birth and baptism were entered in the church missal - they were: Thomas de
Pennington, forty-five years, Hugh de Coventry, fifty, Richard Burgess, sixty,
Thomas Swettenham, fifty-four, and Henry Bostock, aged sixty years.
It
would seem that there can be little doubt that Adam was born in the spring of
1412. Being only seven when his father died, the manor of Bostock and the other
lands were seized into the hands of the earl of Chester, by the then escheator,
John Kingsley. He was successful in obtaining the guardianship of the young Adam
for himself and for thirteen years farmed the estates and drew on the revenues
arising from them. He was escheator of the county for several years and may have
used his office for extortionate purposes, for in 1431 an inquiry was held,
before his successor in that office, as to his possession of the manor of Stoke
near Nantwich which he had acquired in 1418 whilst escheator.
Adam
did not see eye to eye with his guardian and may have suspected the man�s
honesty for, in 1433 there was a feud between them. Problems between the two had
started in January that year as on 14th Adam entered into a recognizance in the
some of �200 not to depart out of the inner bailey of Chester castle - a form
of detention. Another recognizance dated 28
February was issued for Adam's safe custody. It is possible that Adam,
anxious to obtain his patrimony, was rebelling against Kingsley who was holding
on to the estates for longer then he should. Adam's prob
etat heard on 9 March was as a the result of a petition to the king for
livery of his lands. During 1433-4, Adam was bound over to keep the peace
towards Kingsley on five separate occasions, in sums ranging from �100 to �200.
In his struggles friends and relations including his cousin Hugh Bostock of
Hassall assisted him.
Kingsley
was not the only one with whom Adam had disagreements. At the same time as he
was in dispute with Kingsley, he feuded with Thomas Hyll and George Wever, and
in the following year with Alwed Radclyf. In fact he appears regularly in
various recognizances to keep the peace from 1435 onwards. Despite this apparent
lawless behaviour he, along with Hugh Bostock, Henry Bostock, and Ralph Bostok
of Bunbury, was commissioned to arrest Henry Merton and John Croxton for various
offences.
|
Returning to domestic matters, Adam finally received livery of his lands on 22 April 1434 about the time of his marriage to a neighbour�s daughter who was to become a rich heiress. Hugh de Venables, baron of Kinderton had two sons: Hugh, who despite marrying died childless in 1449 and Richard, whose son, Hugh, was slain at the battle of Bloreheath in 1459 before he could father any children. Old Hugh Venables also had two daughters: Joan, wife of Richard Cotton of Cotton and Ridware, and Elizabeth, who married Adam Bostock. |
Arms of Venables, Barons of Kinderton |
These two daughters eventually
became heiresses to the barony of Kinderton, which included the manors of
Kinderton, Mershton, Witton, Eccleston and Brereton, with lands in Rostherne,
Sproston, Newton (on Wirral), Bradwall, Tetton, Stanthorne, Wharton and
elsewhere, and salt-pits and houses in Middlewich and Northwich.
A
few years before Adam came of age, he and his brothers, Hugh and Henry, were
named in a document dated 1429/30 as remainder men in tail of lands Middlewich,
Knutsford, Holmes Chapel and Nantwich, which were settled by Agnes, daughter and
heiress of Roger Holme of Middlewich: it is more than likely that she was their
sister.
In
1442/3 Adam acquired eighteen acres of land, one of meadow and three of woodland
in Wygland from Margaret, wife of David Malpas. These additional lands were
probably some part of his mother's inheritance.
In
l448/9 Adam was bound over to keep the peace in the sum of �100 on two
occasions towards the abbot of Vale Royal: sureties were held by Thomas de
Bostock, Adam son of David de Bostock, Hugh Venables of Agden and William
Holford. Three years later he was bound over again, this time in the sum of �200.
These sums of money pledged for Adam's good behaviour may not sound a great
deal, but in the mid-fifteenth century they were the equivalent of �40,000 and
�80,000 in today's money.
In
the summer of 1456 Henry VI�s queen, Margaret of Anjou, and her son Edward,
prince of Wales and earl of Chester, visited the midlands and the north-west to
seek support for the king against Richard duke of York and his followers.
Cheshire was to become her power base and to those she recruited was distributed
her badge of a white swan. It is somewhat ironic that a Lancastrian king should
find support in a county so loyal to Richard II just over sixty years before,
and whose people loyally wore the badge of the white hart. The rebellion of the
duke of York in 1458/9 began the second phase of the Wars of the Roses. In
September 1459 the Queen and her son were based in Chester whilst the king was
at Nottingham. Men from all over Cheshire joined the Lancastrian army under the
leadership of Lord Audley. Then on 25 September the army of Cheshiremen blocked
the advance of a Yorkist contingent that was travelling from Newcastle to Market
Drayton, on route to meet up with the main army at Ludlow, at Bloreheath. The
Queen watched the battle from a nearby church tower and witnessed the
destruction of her army and the slaying of many Cheshiremen, due in part to the
treachery of Thomas, Lord Stanley, his brother Sir William and their Cheshire
contingents. The desertion by the Stanleys cannot have been a last minute
decision for there is evidence of their hindering recruitment for the
Lancastrian cause on the Wirral.
The
ancient pedigrees of the family state that Sir Adam Bostock was slain at this
battle, along with other notable Cheshiremen, such as Sir John Done of Utkinton,
Sir Thomas Dutton and his sons, Sir John Egerton, Sir John Legh of Booths, Sir
William Troutbeck and Sir Hugh Venables of Kinderton. However, Adam occurs in
later records and cannot have been slain in battle: he may have had a son named
Adam, who would then have been aged about 25 years, who was killed at the battle
and forgotten about by the historians, owing to the fact that he died young and
without children. A clue to such a suggestion appears in Adam�s inquisition post mortem of 1475 which recorded that the heir was
Ralph and added the words now surviving as
son and heir. Wording that seems to imply there had been another and elder
son who did not survive.
It
is possible that Adam and his son Ralph continued to support the Lancastrian
cause for in August 1462, just over a year after the Yorkists came to power, the
two men were bound over, in the sum of �300 to be loyal to the new King Edward
IV. Sureties for their allegiance were found with Sir Thomas Manley, Sir John
Done and Sir Hugh Calveley.
Between
1434 and 1462 Adam occurs often in contemporary documents and often styled armiger (esquire). On many occasions he was bound over to keep the
peace with sureties being found by Sir Thomas Manley, members of the Rotor
family, and others, but, after appearing in 1465 as a collector of a subsidy in
the Northwich Hundred, he abruptly disappears until the date of his inquisition.
In
addition to his military and lawless activities Adam is found in connection with
the administration of the salt industry in Middlewich. Between 1456 and 1460, he
was the farmer of the town (i.e. he held the rents and profits of the industry,
the markets and courts) for an annual payment of �17
6s. 8d. payable to the Earl of Chester.
Adam
died on Sunday, 30 April 1475. His inquisition
post mortem is very brief and states that on the day he died he only held
lands in Occleston and Calveley and that his son was then aged 30 years. It
would seem that he had already handed the lordship of the manor of Bostock and
other properties to his son.
Adam�s
children, in addition to the conjectured Adam and the above named Ralph, were:
William, who seems to have lived at Bostock, Wimboldsley and Stapleford;
Nicholas, who lived at Mobberley; John, who according to Ormerod lived at
Belgrave, but which is to be doubted as there was a family established there
earlier; Eleanor, wife of Humphrey Bostock of Moreton Say, Salop; Margaret, wife
of Wil1iam Whitney of Whitney; Elizabeth, wife of John Gateacre of Gateacre,
Liverpool; and Margery, wife of Lewis Eaton of Wildmore. He also had an
illegitimate daughter, Jane, who married her cousin Robert Bostock of Churton
and after him Sir Edward Holt of Wimboldsley. The antiquary Piers Leycester says
that John, Adam�s fourth son, married a French nobleman�s daughter � Dame
Mary, daughter of the Earl of Grantsprey and Seigneur de Borsalia and that they
were the great grand-parents of Laurence Bostock the antiquary: in this
Leycester may be wrong as we shall learn later.