A
Couple of Theories
Various antiquaries and historians of the Tudor period believe that Osmer was
the �original� Bostock. The heralds of the College of Arms in 1580 recorded
that Adam de Bostock, who was living circa
1300, was the son of Sir Edward, son of Sir William (and Elizabeth Audley), son
of Henry, son of Sir Warren (and Hawise de Quincy), son of Ranulf (and Margaret
Vernon), son of Gilbert, son of Roger, son of Richard, son of Hugh, son of Osmer
the Saxon.
The seventeenth century antiquary Piers Leycester of Tabley, suggests that Adam de Bostock was the son of Sir Edward (and a daughter of the Trumpington family), son of William (and Elizabeth), son of Arthur (and Bridget Blundeville), son of Henry (and Eleanor Poole), son of Warren (and Hawise), son of William (and Margaret Vernon and widow of a Wilbraham), son of Gilbert, son of Roger, son of Richard, son of Osmer, son of 'Hugh fitz Richard, lord of Bostock under Edward the Confessor'. The genealogist John Booth, writing in the mid-seventeenth century, gives a similar descent. However, 'Osmer son of Hugh fitz Richard' is too improbable to accept: Osmer is a Saxon name, Hugh fitz Richard seems not to be, and also it would push the family history two generations before the Conquest and would give the family something of a unique status.
Although
there are minor variations as to their order, the suggested pedigrees seem to
give nine generations between Adam and Osmer, and this, on the basis of 23 years
between generations, means that Osmer was born in the mid-eleventh century and
was a young man at the time of the battle of Hastings - chronologically this
would seem about right. If we are to believe both Leycester and Booth then the
progenitor of the family was born circa
1000! A version that appears in the pedigree of the Bostock family of
Sittingbourne, Kent, as recorded in Burke�s Landed
Gentry, and accepted by the College of Arms, records the ancient pedigrees
only so far back as Randolph (and Margaret), son of Gilbert.
Doubts
about Osmer
George Ormerod in his History of Cheshire
agrees with Edward Williamson, a seventeenth century antiquarian, and quotes:
�Dr. Williamson, who very properly doubts the descent from Osmer, says, that
�we may be assured by Inquisition 2 Hen. II, yt Warine de Bostock (second
husband of Hawise, daughter to Hugh Kyvelyoc earl of Chester), was ye son of
Randle, son of Adam de Bostock.� Ormerod then says that Warren was the father
of Gilbert, who was father of William, father of Philip, father of Adam. I have
so far been unable to trace the inquisition referred to. If Williamson is right
then this early Adam would have been born circa
1137, but who were his forefathers?
Common
Factors
There are certainly a number of common factors in the pedigrees quoted. Each
mentions a Gilbert, son of Roger (I would compute that Gilbert was born circa
1137) and these two may occur in a document of 1174 which relates to the
marriage of Amice, one of the daughters of Hugh, the fifth earl of Chester, to
Randle Mainwaring of Warmingham and Peover. With his daughter, the Earl gave to
Randle �the services of Gilbert son of Roger� which amounted to the service
of one knight. Whilst there is nothing in the deed to further identify Gilbert
or his father, Roger, it is interesting to note that the main line of the
Mainwaring family died out and the succession became uncertain a John de Bostock
was presented to the people of Warmingham in 1455 as the lord�s esquire and
deputy: it was said that he was descended of Gilbert son of Roger. As patron of
the living of the parish John nominated his brother Stephen as vicar. A junior
line of the Bostocks of Bostock lived at Elton, in Warmingham parish, for many
centuries and the main line of the family held lands in neighbouring Occlestone
and Wimboldsley.
| Another common factor is the marriage of Warren
de Bostock and Hawise, a daughter of Hugh Gyffylliog, fifth earl of Chester
(1155-1181). The earl was born in 1147 and married Beatrix, daughter of Lord
Lucy, justiciar of England, by whom he had Ranulf, the sixth earl, along with
six daughters. Hawise, born circa
1170, was married to Roger, son of Saher de Quincy, earl of Lincoln and
Winchester and when Roger die in 1217, the earldom of Lincoln was transferred to
Earl Ranulf. On his death in 1252, the
earldom passed to Hawise who then became countess of Lincoln. From her the title
passed to John de Lacy, baron of Halton, husband of her daughter Margaret. |
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