 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
|
The
English Civil War It
is this Elizabeth Trentham who, as sole heiress of the Trentham
family wealth, has become conflated with Elizabeth Trentham, Countess
of Oxford, by generations of Oxfordians thereby leading them to
the misconception that the second wife of Edward de Vere was herself
a wealthy heiress. Two
years later, in 1642, England was plunged into one of the bloodiest
periods in its history since the Wars of the Roses – the English
Civil War. After years of inconclusive skirmishing in which the
advantage gained by one side in the conflict was nullified by gains
by the other in a different field of battle, in 1649 King Charles
I was eventually tried and executed and in 1651 Oliver Cromwell
declared himself Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland
and Ireland. The horrors of the war and the puritanical terror forced
upon the country under Cromwell set father against son and brother
against brother – as we shall soon discover. Hundreds
of parish churches were despoiled by the rampaging puritans with
the loss of much of England’s funerary heritage and, in his
fundamentalist zeal, Cromwell even outlawed the theatre and banned
Christmas. The royalist Sneyds, while holding on to all their property, suffered a half-hearted attempt to capture Keele Hall – the resulting fire in one wing of the hall leading to the tragic loss of all but a few documents from the Tudor and Jacobean periods that would otherwise be found in the Sneyd archive today. This fire and the loss of a mass of family documents was recorded by the Victorian John Sneyd in a reply to a professional genealogist whom he had engaged to work on the Sneyd pedigree – John Sneyd explained in this letter that he’d handed over everything in his possession. Had
any of Edward de Vere’s papers remained at Keele when the Trentham
estate papers arrived with the wardship of the young ffrancis, it
would seem that they befell a similar fate to what may have been
a more significant archive of Oxford’s papers which perished
in the great fire at Wilton – the family seat of the Herbert
brothers who ensured the publication of the First Folio, Philip
Herbert being Oxford’s son-in-law. There is no doubt about whose side ffrancis and his mother Lady Prudence were on as England was plunged into this bloody conflict. Aged only twenty-two at the start of the war, ffrancis may well have seen action almost immediately when, in Novemeber 1642, a Royalist force attempted to take the strategically important town of Leek but was, according to the official history (A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 7: Leek and the Moorlands), driven away. Sadly, no record has survived of the composition of the Royalist force in this encounter. However,
as a prominent young Lord of the manor who could excercise manorial
authority over a wide area to call men to his standard, the award
of a knighthood to ffrancis Trentham at this time was almost certainly
recognition of his loyalty to the crown in a district where sympathy
for the Parliamentary cause was growing by the day.. With his possession
of Westwood Grange, Sir ffrancis would have been able to provide
the Royalist force with an easily defendable redoubt where they
could muster and gather their strength before launching their assault. Earlier
in the year, Sir ffrancis’ mother Lady Prudence had died and
was buried at Rocester on 10 February 1642 at the age of forty-three.
The rumours which persist to the present day that she was most cruelly
abused before being murdered may well indicate that her son Sir
ffrancis’ valour in his first encounter with the enemy was
driven by a desire for vengeance and that Cromwellian thugs were
responsible for her brutal death. A year
later, in December 1643, a Royalist force under the command of Lord
Eythin was able to take the town of Leek but their victory proved
short-lived. Such was the strategic importance of the town, by the
following March a Parliamentary force had not only retaken the town
but had also established a new Parliamentary Committee (one of only
three in Staffordshire) in order to impose their writ upon the moorlands
– and the town would remain loyal to Parliament for the
rest of the war. It
was not long before the Parliamentary commanders based at Leek concluded
that if they were able to encompass the death of Sir ffrancis Trentham
then the threat from Rocester – one of the last remaining Royalist
strongholds in the moorlands – would be eliminated. When one
learns the name of the commander who planned the ambush, it becomes
clear that, actually, the man’s prime motivation in what follows
was utterly venal – he was none other than John Bowyer of Biddulph,
son of Sir William and brother of Sir ffrancis’ wife Elizabeth,
who was now Colonel John Bowyer in Cromwell’s army. John
Bowyer and Sir ffrancis Trentham had been brought up in Biddulph
as brothers – perhaps Bowyer had bitterly resented the wealthy
young heir coming into his familyas his father’s ward, seeing
him as a rival for the affections of his father. One thing, however,
is certain – Bowyer concluded that, with Sir ffrancis’
death, the entire Trentham estate would fall into his hands once
he claimed wardship over his sister’s daughter, the four-year
old Elizabeth Trentham, there being no male heir. It is impossible
to know where Lady Elizabeth’s loyalty lay – with her
husband or her brother – but it is significant that before
setting out on his final journey, on 11 April 1644 Sir ffrancis
made out his will which indicates that he knew that he was about
to face the enemy in battle. On
15 April 1644, just four days after signing his will, Sir ffrancis
was buried at Rocester at the age of only twenty-four. And less
than a month later, according to A History of the County of Stafford:
Volume 7: Leek and the Moorlands, Colonel John Bowyer received his
reward for having encompassed the death of his brother-in-law –
he was appointed Governor of Leek. Sampson Erdeswick, in his Survey of Staffordshire, quotes a fascinating document which records the events that followed, and the apparent leniancy of the Parliamentary Committee only makes sense when one knows that the “Mrs Trentham” in the document was the sister of one of the senior commanders of Parliamentary forces in the region: “‘April
xxvjth [26] 1644, it is ordered that upon Colonell Rugeley’s
desire, on behalf of Mrs Trentham [Lady Elizabeth, née Bowyer],
Mr Anson, the lawyer, shall have libertye to-morrowe to goe to Mrs
Trentham’s house at Rocester, to advise and assist her touchinge
her late husband’s estate; he first givinge good securitye
to return to prison againe to Stafford, upon Saturday, the fourthe
of Maye next, and shall not in the meane tyme goe to any of the
enemies garrisons, nor to any other place than to Rocester aforesaid.’” Once
the widowed Elizabeth had tidied up the affairs of her late husband,
she and her four-year old daughter Elizabeth then returned to her
family home of Biddulph Hall along with the Trentham estate papers.
She was the last member of the family ever to reside at Rocester.
And with the Trentham heirs having moved so often in such a short
time, the scattering among the various houses like Keele Hall, Biddulph
Hall and Westwood Grange of their heirlooms like the family portraits
and also of their personal papers is the reason why they are so
difficult to locate today. In
his will, Sir ffrancis had named his daughter Elizabeth his sole
heiress and yet, under the strict entail of Sir ffrancis’ grandfather
ffrancis Trentham, the family estate was to be the inheritance of
successive male heirs and, in default of any male heir, it was decreed
that the estate would pass down the line of successive younger sons.
Prior to his death, according to the introduction in the published
Rocester Parish Register, “Sir Francis ... tried to cut off
the entail, by levying a fine and suffering a recovery, so as to
leave all to his daughter, but his uncle Sir Christopher found such
error in the recovery that he succeeded to the estate.” |
|
|
Just
a few weeks before Sir ffrancis’ death, Sir Christopher Trentham
(who had been admitted to the Inner Temple in 1615 and knighted
by the year 1627), had been placed under house arrest at the Dairy
House at Horton Hay on the outskirts of Leek, recorded thus by Sampson
Erdeswick, in his Survey of Staffordshire: “‘By
the Committee of the Sequestrations at Stafford, March 26 1644,
it is ordered, yt Sir Christopher Trentham shall hould the Dayry
House for this yeare to come, paying fifteen pounds in hand and
fifteen pounds more at Michaelmas, giving security for the rent,
and repayring unto this committee before he enter it.’ The
dairy house belonged at this time to Sir Christopher Trentham, and
is in the parish of Haughton [sic Horton]. It was afterwards the
property of the Biddulphs of Biddulph.” It is a wonder that Sir Christopher Trentham – who surely knew the truth about the circumstances of his brother’s death – didn’t meet a similar end to his brother for frustrating the avaricious expectations of Colonel Bowyer regarding the Trentham estate but he seems to have died a natural death and was buried at Rocester on 6 August 1649, leaving two daughters, Winifred and Marie, from his marriage to Winifred, daughter of John Biddulph. Under
the strict entail of his father ffrancis, the Trentham estate then
passed to Sir Christopher’s younger brother William whose only
daughter had died in infancy. When William himself died and was
buried at Rocester on 18 Jan 1652, the Trentham line had finally
run out of male heirs and the twelve year old Elizabeth Trentham
became one of the wealthiest heiresses in the country under the
guardianship of an uncle who now stood to profit greatly by having
encompassed the death of her father.
Copyright 2007 Jeremy Crick. |
The Dairy House at Horton. Sir Christopher Trentham lived here during the Civil War after he inherited the Trentham estate following the death of his nephew Sir ffrancis Trentham in 1664. It is the only surviving building in Staffordshire lived in by a Trentham heir. |
