When the first shot was fired which proclaimed to anxious England that the differences between the King and the Parliament were only to be settled by an appeal to arms, the two sons of Henry Bradshaw had attained to the fulness of manhood, Henry, the eldest, having then lately completed his forty-second year, while John was his junior only by two years.
Henry Bradshaw, the third of the name, who resided at Marple, was born, as previously stated, in 1600, and baptised at the old church at Stockport on the 23rd June in the same year. Following with admirable consistency the practice of his progenitors, he further added to the territorial possessions of his house by marrying a rich heiress—Mary, the eldest of the two daughters and co-heirs of Bernard Wells,[7] of Holme, in the parish of Bakewell. The marriage settlement bears date 30 Sep., 6 Charles I. (1631), and Mr. Ormerod, the historian of Cheshire, says that he had bestowed upon him by his father-in-law the hall of Wyberslegh, but this is evidently an error, for, as we have previously seen, his father and grandfather between them purchased Wyberslegh, along with Marple, from Sir Edward Stanley, a quarter of a century previously, and the hall continued, as it had been from time immemorial, appendant to that of Marple. It is more than probable, however, that he took his young bride to Wyberslegh, and resided there during his father’s lifetime, so that it would appear that the first of the Bradshaws settled at Marple lived at The Place, where he died in 1611, after which it ceased to be occupied as the family residence. Henry, his son, resided at the hall, and the youngest of the three occupied Wyberslegh until he succeeded to the family estate. Mary Wells, by whom he had a son who succeeded as heir, and two daughters, predeceased him, and he again entered the marriage state, his second wife being Anne, daughter of George Bowdon, of Bowdon, in Cheshire, by whom he had five sons and one or more daughters, Though by no means insensible to the advantages accruing from the possession of worldly wealth, it does not appear that he added materially to his temporal estate by his second marriage. The Bowdons were a family of ancient rank, who at one time owned one-fourth part of Bowdon, but their estates had gradually dwindled away, and were finally alienated by sale to the Booths of Dunham, in the early part of Elizabeth’s reign.
Inheriting from his father the Puritan sentiments of the age, Henry Bradshaw carried those feelings with him into a more active arena. Living in close neighbourship with Colonel Dukenfield, Edward Hyde, of Norbury, Ralph Arderne, of Harden, Ralph Holland, of Denton, and holding intimate relations with the Booths of Dunham, the Breretons of Handforth, the Stanleys of Alderley, and other influential Presbyterian families, their friendship doubtless helped to shape the part he took in public affairs. When the storm which had been long gathering burst, he took his stand with the Parliament against the King, and became one of the most active officers on the side of the Commonwealth. He served as sergeant-major in the regiment commanded by his neighbour, Robert Dukenfield, and would, therefore, in all probability, take part in the lengthened siege of “Mr. Tatton’s house of Whittenshaw (Wythenshawe),” in the winter of 1643–4, as well as in the fruitless attempt, a few months later, to defend Stockport Bridge against Rupert and his Cavaliers, who were hastening to the relief of Lathom House, in Lancashire, where the heroic Countess of Derby was bravely defending her husband’s home against greatly superior forces. Though a Cheshire man, he held a lieutenant-colonel’s commission in Assheton’s Lancashire regiment, and subsequently was appointed to the command of the entire militia within the Macclesfield hundred, in his own county. He was present also with the Cheshire men at the final overthrow of the Royalist army—the “crowning mercy,” as Cromwell phrased it—at Worcester, Sept 3, 1651, where it was said he was wounded, but if so the injury must have been only slight, for before the end of the month he was acting as one of the members of the court-martial appointed under a commission from Cromwell for the trial of the Earl of Derby. After the disaster at Worcester, the Earl had accompanied the King in his flight, until he was safe in the care of the Pendrells, when, with Lord Lauderdale, Lord Talbot, and about 40 troopers, he started northwards, in the hope of overtaking the remnant of the Scotch army, but when near Nantwich the fugitives fell into the hands of Oliver Edge,[8] a captain in the Manchester regiment, also returning from Worcester. Quarter having been given by his captor, the Earl naturally believed that he would be entitled to the immunities of a prisoner of war, but he soon found himself under close confinement in Chester Castle, of which Colonel Dukenfield was at the time governor. Cromwell, having got his most formidable foe in his power, resolved to get for ever rid of him by the shortest process that time and circumstances admitted. The Earl was therefore at once brought for trial before Bradshaw and the other members appointed on the court-martial, on the charge of high treason in contravening an Act of Parliament passed only a few weeks before, and of which, as his accusers were well aware, he could have no knowledge, and, in defiance of the recognised laws of war and the conditions on which he had surrendered, was pronounced guilty and sentenced to be beheaded at Bolton. Dr. Halley, in his history of “Lancashire Puritanism and Nonconformity,” says that Colonel Bradshaw, notwithstanding that he had voted for the rejection of the Earl’s plea; “earnestly entreated his brother, the Lord President, to obtain a commutation of the punishment,” but, if he did, his efforts were unsuccessful. Seacombe attributed the execution of the Earl to the “inveterate malice” of (President) Bradshaw, Rigby, and Birch, which originated, he says, as to Bradshaw, because of the Earl’s refusing him the Vice-Chamberlainship of Chester;[9] Rigby, because of his ill-success at Lathom; and Birch, in his lordship having trailed him under a hay cart at Manchester on the occasion of the outbreak in July, 1642, by which he got, even among his own party, the epithet of “Lord Derby’s Carter.” He adds that, “Cromwell and Bradshaw had so ordered the matter that when they saw the major part of the House inclined to allow the Earl’s plea, as the Speaker was putting the question, eight or nine of them quitted the House, and those left in it being under the number of forty, no question could be put.” The latter statement, however, is hardly borne out by the Commons Journal,[10] which, under date “14 October, 1651,” makes this brief mention of the reception of the Earl’s petition:—
Mr. Speaker, by way of report, acquaints the House with a letter which he had received from the Earl of Derby; and the question being put—That the said letter be now read, the House was divided. The yeas went forth, Sir William Brereton and Mr. Ellis tellers for the yeas, with the yeas, 22; Mr. Bond and Major-General Harrison, tellers for the noes, with the noes, 16, so it passed in the affirmative. A letter from the Earl of Derby, of the 11th of October, 1651, with a petition therein enclosed, entitled, “The Humble Petition of the Earl of Derby,” was this day read.
In the administration of affairs in his own county, Colonel Bradshaw took an active part. He was one of the commissioners for the Macclesfield hundred for the sequestration of the estates of those who retained Royalist opinions, or who refused to take the national covenant, and his name appears first among the signataries to the famous Lancashire and Cheshire petition to the Parliament, praying for the establishment of the Presbyterian religion, and urging that “the frequenters of separate conventicles might be discountenanced and punished.” The petitioners who had previously pleaded conscience having gained the ascendancy were now anxious to stifle freedom of thought, and to exercise a tyranny over their fellow-men, justifying the remark of Fuller, that “those who desired most ease and liberty for their sides when bound with Episcopacy, now girt their own garments closest about the consciences of others.” In those troublous times marriage as a religious ceremony was forbidden, and became merely a civil contract entered into before a justice of the peace, after three “publications” at the “meeting place,” or in the “market place,” the statute declaring that “no other marriage whatsoever shall be held or accounted a marriage according to the laws of England.” Bradshaw, as a county justice, officiated at many of these civil marriages, and his neat and carefully-written autograph frequently appears in the church books of the period, with his heraldic seal affixed (for, however he might affect to contemn such vanities, he was yet careful to display the armorial ensigns of his house when acting officially with his more aristocratic neighbours), sometimes as appointing parish registrars, and at others ordering the levying of church rates and sanctioning the parish accounts, which at the time could not be passed without magisterial confirmation.
Colonel Bradshaw lived to see the fall of the Commonwealth, and the overthrow of that form of government he had done so much to establish, but he did not long survive the restoration of monarchy. After that event had taken place, he was brought before the Lords Committee to answer for the part he had taken in the court-martial on Lord Derby, and committed to the custody of the Messenger of Black Rod. He appears, however, to have been leniently dealt with, for, after submitting to what reads very like an apology for his conduct, he was set at liberty, and permitted to pass the remainder of his days in peace. Those days were but few: the anxiety consequent upon the changed aspect of affairs was too much for him—his spirit was broken, and he died at Marple a few months after (11th March, 1661–2). On the 15th March, 1661–2, in accordance with his previously-expressed desire, his remains were laid beside those of his father and grandfather in the little chapel belonging to his family, then standing on the south side of the chancel of Stockport Church.
It does not appear that a copy of his will, which was proved at Chester, by the executor, 27th February, 1662, has at any time been published, but the following abstract, made by Mr. J. Fred. Beever, and contributed by him to “Local Gleanings,” appeared in the Manchester Courier of October 15, 1875:—
2 July 12 Car. II (1660) I Henry Bradshaw of Marple co. Chester doe ... buried in my father’s grave in Marple Quire in the par. Churche of Stockport if I depart this life in Cheshire ... my sonne John Bradshawe ... all my lands in Bowden Medlarie (Bowdon Edge?) and Mellor in the county of Darbie ... my sonne William Bradshawe ... my lands in Chapel-le-Frith and Briggeworth (Bugsworth?) co. Derby ... Godfrey Bradshawe, Francis Bradshawe and Joseph Bradshawe, my three youngest sonnes ... all my lands in Torkington co. Chester ... Anne my lovinge wife ... she having a jointure out of my lands in Cheshire and Wibersley ... my sonne and heire Henery Bradshawe ... all my bookes ... my twoe daughters Barbara and Catharine, they being by their grandfather Wells and his wife well provided for. To my daughter Dorothy ... £400, to my daughter Rachel ... £500, to my youngest daughter Anne ... £400 ... my said sonne Henery Bradshawe ... (the residuary legatee and executor) ... my good friend Edward Warren, of Poynton esq.... (overseer).