CHAPTER XXVI
CIVIL WAR IN CHESHIRE. III
The Protectorate and the Restoration
The story is told that a schoolboy, wandering among the tombstones in the churchyard of Macclesfield, scratched these strange lines on one of the grave-slabs:
My brother Harry must heir the land;
My brother Frank must be at his command;
While I, poor Jack, shall do that
Which all the world will wonder at.
'Poor Jack' was John Bradshaw, whose name is the first on the list of those who signed the warrant for the execution of the king. On January 1, 1649, Parliament decided that Charles should be tried before a High Court of Justice, and on the twenty-seventh of the same month, Bradshaw, the president of the Court, pronounced the death sentence in Westminster Hall.
John Bradshaw, the 'regicide', was born at Wibbersley Hall, near Disley. In the register of the Parish Church of Stockport is the record of his baptism: 'December, 1602, John, the son of Henry Bradshaw, of Marple, baptised the tenth. Traitor.' The word 'Traitor' has been added by another hand, no doubt that of some ardent Royalist.
He was educated at Bunbury School by Edward Burghall, a notable Cheshire Puritan, who was afterwards made vicar of Acton, and wrote a Diary (or copied someone else's Diary) of the Civil War in Cheshire. Bradshaw also probably spent a short time at the Grammar School at Macclesfield. He became Mayor of Congleton and Chief Justice of Cheshire.
The name of Major-General Thomas Harrison, a native of Nantwich, also appears on the list of those who signed the death-warrant of the king.