Bradshaw makes allusion in his will to the fact that “God had not vouchsafed him issue.” Though no children were born to him by his wife, he is said to have had “an illegitimate son, whose last descendant, Sarah Bradshaw, married, in 1757, Sir Henry Cavendish, ancestor of Lord Waterpark.” In the absence, however, of any substantial evidence, the accuracy of this statement may well be questioned, for we can hardly suppose the testator would have bequeathed so large a property to his nephew, and have made no provision for his own offspring, while permitting him to bear and perpetuate his name. Though the bar sinister was the reverse of an honourable augmentation, the stigma of illegitimacy did not attach so much in those days as now. Sir Henry Cavendish, the ancestor of Lord Waterpark, who was himself descended from an illegitimate son of Henry, the eldest son of Sir William Cavendish, of Chatsworth, by his third wife, the renowned “Bess of Hardwick,” married, August 5, 1757, Sarah (or, according to some authorities, Mary) only child and heiress of Richard Bradshaw, who, during her husband’s lifetime, was, in her own right, created (15th June, 1792) Baroness Waterpark, of Waterpark, in Ireland; and the supposition that John Bradshaw left an illegitimate son seems to rest upon the statement made by Playfair, in his “British Family Antiquities,” and reiterated by Burke, and still more recently in the “Peerage” of Forster, that this lady was “lineally descended from the Lord President Bradshaw.”
Another member of the family employed in the public service during the Commonwealth period was Richard Bradshaw. His name does not appear in any of the pedigrees of the Marple line, nor has his identity been established, though it is very probable he was a nephew of the Lord President’s, and he was certainly present as one of the mourners at his funeral. He held the office for some time of Receiver of the Crown Revenues in Cheshire and North Wales, and was subsequently appointed to the post of English Resident at Hamburg, whence he was transferred to Russia, and other of the northern Courts. A great number of his letters are given in Thurloe’s “State Papers,” and they are especially interesting as showing the care taken to watch the movements of Charles II., and the actions of the European Powers likely to render him assistance in any attempt to recover the throne. In one of these letters addressed on his return to England to Secretary Thurloe, and dated from Axeyard, 1st November, 1658, requesting that the sum of £2,188 0s. 9d. then due to him from the Government might be paid, some curious circumstances are related in connection with his previous official life. He says:—
I am necessitated to acquaint your lordship, that in the yeare 1648, I beinge then receiver of the crowne-revenue in North-wales and Cheshire for the state, and cominge to London to passe accomts, and pay in some money to Mr. Fauconberg the receiver generall, my lodgings in Kinge Street, Westminster, was broake into by theeves the very same day the apprentises riss in London and came down to Whitehall; and £430 was taken fourthe of a trunke in the chamber where I lay. Though it was a tyme of great distraction, yet I used such meanes with the warrants and assistants of Mr. Fauconbridge, as that I found out and apprehended the fellows the next day, in which the messenger, Captain Compton, was assistinge to me, whoe were tryed and condemned at the sessions in the Old Bailey as Compton very well knowes, being the sonnes of persons of note in Covent Garden. The prosecution of them cost me above £100, besides the greatest trouble that ever I had in my life aboute any businesse. But before my accompte could be declared by the commissioners for the revenue, whereon I expected allowance for that money, I was commanded to Hamburg; and now being to settle these accompts in the exchequer, to have out my ultimate discharge thence, I am told that it is not in the power of the lords commissioners for the treasury to give allowance thereof in the way of the exchequer, without a privy seale to pardon that sume. Therefore I humbly request that the £430 so taken may be included in the privy seal with the £3,461 5s. 10d., and then the whole will be £3,891 5s. 10d., which, if your lordship be satisfied with the accompts, I pray that Mr. Milbey or Mr. Moreland may have your lordship’s order to make ready for the seale.
The riot referred to was no doubt that of the 9th of April, when, in disregard of the strict Puritan orders in relation to religious observances, the apprentices were found playing at bowls in Moorfields during church time. They were ordered by the militia guard to disperse, but refused, fought the guard, and held their ground. Being soon after routed by cavalry, they raised the cry of “clubs,” when they were joined by the watermen. The fight lasted through the night, and in the morning they had got possession of Ludgate and Newgate, and had stretched chains across all the great thoroughfares, their cry being “God and King Charles.” The tumult lasted for forty hours, and was not put an end to until they were ridden down by a body of cavalry from Westminster.
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
B
H E
1669
upon the hall and the stables. By his marriage he had three sons, Henry, High Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1701, who had to wife Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Legh, of the East Hall, in High Legh, and died in 1724, without issue; Thomas, who died unmarried in 1743; and John, who predeceased his brother, being also issueless; the estates, on the death of Thomas, devolving upon the only daughter, Mary, who married William Pimlot, and by him had two sons, the eldest of whom, John, succeeded to the estates under a settlement made by his uncle, Thomas Bradshaw, and had issue a daughter and only child, Elizabeth, married to Lindon Evelyn, of Keynsham Court, county Hereford, Esq., M.P. for Dundalk, whose only daughter and heir, Elizabeth, married, December 29th, 1838, Randall Edward Plunkett, Baron Dunsany, elder brother of the present holder of that title.