Third newsletter of the Rigmaiden Family History (One Name Study), January 2013

I hope that everyone in the informal Rigmaiden One-Name Study group had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year and I must apologise for the lateness of this newsletter. Other activities at home meant that we were particularly busy during the run up to Christmas and I have only just managed to write a few lines.
 I have chosen to write about some Rigmaidens who lived between the 14th and 16 centuries most of whom are recorded in the Lancashire Victoria County History and whose lives are known to us from documents from the time, such as wills, indentures and bonds of various sorts which are available in the local record offices, and through disputes of one sort or another which would have been dealt with by courts and commissions and those documents would be kept in The National Archives at Kew, just outside London. 
During 2013 I will add to the body of knowledge already accumulated if possible, and try to discover some other descendants of the various Rigmaiden lines, both male and female.
First more information about an individual mentioned in the last newsletter:
William Rigmaiden, of Blyth Nottinghamshire (ctd)
We left William in 1401 as widower of the wealthy Elizabeth Townley.  His influence continued when he was made guardian of the land and person of his godson and nephew William Skillicorne who was heir to the manor of Preese in Kirkham as well as various holdings in Lancaster. William was the son of the older William’s sister, Margaret. He remained in this role until the boy came of age in 1407.
It is thought that he came into his estates in Blyth through a second marriage but it is known that he spent the rest of his life in Nottinghamshire. His first appointment was as escheator of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in 1406. He became involved in local administration being sheriff for three terms and spent 13 years sitting on the Nottinghamshire bench. He remained a staunch supporter of the Lancastrian cause but must have been advanced in years by 1415 when letters of royal protection were given him in anticipation of Henry V’s first invasion of France. Although he had a distinguished career as Crown employee he only attended one Parliament. He was knighted by 1418 and attended various Commissions of Inquiry between 1414 and 1419.
William was succeeded by his son William who never achieved the success of his father.
[The above information comes from the source History of Parliament Online]
[It should also be mentioned here that the family pedigree contained in the Chetham Society publication “Remains historical and literary connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancashire and Cheshire” vol cv, chapter VII “Old halls and old families: Wedacre or Woodacre Hall” claims that William died in 1386 and makes no mention of his illustrious career though it does state that he married Elizabeth Townley  who died in 1401. There are number of errors or inconsistencies in the early stages of this pedigree]


The Rigmaidens of Wedacre (ctd) [To recap from the last newsletter]
Near the town of Garstang in Lancashire there was a manor called Barnacre, originally no more than a hamlet. Within this manor were a number of smaller estates or manors, one of which being Wedacre or Woodacre.
This was once the residence of the Rigmaiden family beginning with John de Rigmaiden and his wife Isolda in the 1290s onwards. John and Isolda had two sons John and Marmaduke and the estate passed to John and then to his son Thomas and wife Joan. Thomas died before his father in 1328, his father being alive still in 1331. He left an infant son John in the care of Joan,  his wife,  who remarried to Robert de Culwen.  The same John married Lettice when he was old enough but died in 1355 leaving a daughter , Joan, as his heir. John’s wife Lettice remarried to Richard of Molyneux of Great Crosby. Unfortunately Joan died without issue in or before 1362 but was married to Sir John de Coupland who acquired through marriage the Rigmaiden manor of Upper Rawcliffe which went to the de Gynes or Coucy family 
The Wedacre manor then passed to Thomas de Rigmaiden (wife Johanna), son of Marmaduke (mentioned above). He left his estate to his son John who married Margaret, daughter of Robert de Hornby. In case they did not have children he left it then to his younger sons, in order, Richard, William and Peter , then to his daughter Agnes and her husband William de Bradkirk, and all their respective heirs.  However, it seems that John married again to Elizabeth (or Letitia who died in 1387) and left a son and heir, Thomas. The aforesaid John died before his father in 1379, so Thomas became the heir after Thomas.  He came of age in 1397. He was still living in 1431 but left the estate to his son Nicholas who inherited the estate in 1445. Nicholas’ son John having died before his father, the estate passed to Nicholas’ grandson, Nicholas aged at that time, in 1478, thirty years.  This second Nicholas died in or before 1496 but seems to have married Margaret, daughter and co-heir of Robert Lawrence of Ashton and Carnforth with whom he had a son, John. .  [This Margaret was responsible for the establishment of the Lady Chapel at the church at Churchtown in 1357]  John was married or contracted to Katherine, daughter of Sir John Pennington of Muncaster.  John’s  son was Thomas who came of age in 1514 but died in 1520 with his son, John,  being only five years old.  His wardship and marriage was granted to John Lawrence. Thomas’ will mentions also an Uncle James, brothers John and Richard, a sister Katherine and daughters Isabel, Margaret  and Eleanor.  His son John Rigmaiden died in 1557 and the estate passed to his cousin, another John (born before 1527) , grandson of the aforementioned Thomas’s brother, John. 
John Rigmaiden bc1527, d1587
This John Rigmaiden was the first to record a pedigree for the family in 1567 for the Herald’s Visitations (Visitation of Lancashire by William Flower) and in the military muster of 1574 was required to “furnish one light horse, two corselettes, two coats plate, two pikes, two long bows, two sheef arrows, two steel cappus, one caliver and one marrione”. He was also a recusant (ie a non-converted Roman Catholic) and was several times brought up before the court for resisting Queen Elizabeth’s attempts to quell the old religion. In 1567 he was called before the Earl of Derby at Lathom to answer for his recusancy, was admonished and allowed to depart, according to some sources. The book Reformation and resistance in Tudor Lancashire by Dr C Haigh, is more rigorous: 'In October 1567 Mollineux and eleven others were were interviewed several times by members of the [Ecclesiastical] commission and the earl of Derby's council, but no action seems to have been taken, though John Rigmaiden of Garstang was arrested and sent to Fleet Prison in London for hearing mass' (p250)
In Dr Haigh’s book, as above:  'On 31 July 1568 a special session of the Commission was held at the earl of Derby's dining chamber at Lathom.....  Seven prominent Lancashire gentlemen, Francis Tunstall, John Talbot, John Rigmaiden, Edward Osbaldeston, John Westby, Towneley and Mollineux, and one prosperous yeoman, Matthew Travers, were examined by the [Ecclesiastical]Commission. Four of the accused admitted that that they did not attend church, though the others claimed to be occasional conformists, and all admitted that they did not receive communion. Each of the eight had received into their houses recusant priests ….. all but Westby … agreed to attend church and receive communion. All eight were dismissed on bonds of 300 marks each to appear within twenty days of any summons....'
p260 'Between the end of the visitation proceedings in November 1571 and October 1578, fourteen Lancashire gentlemen were called before the High Commission [in York} a total of more than seventy times, and poor John Rigmaiden had to appear as often as 18 occasions. Eight of the fourteen spent various periods in prison at York, but the Commission tried to vary its practice according to the character of the individuals concerned'.
P261 'The commissioners subjected this group of gentry to the maximum inconvenience and uncertainty.  John Rigmaiden spent some time in prison and after he was released he was subjected to frequent journeys across the Penines and increasingly heavy recognisances'.
In 1581 he was reputed to have harboured a priest called ‘Little Richard’ which was unlawful and had to pay fines for his beliefs, though he claimed that he attended his parish church but did not take communion. 
Again from Dr Haigh’s book, p283 'Catholic gentlemen could make an important contribution to the number and the religious life of their co-religionists, especially as in the more difficult areas and periods their houses were the only ones large enough to conceal priests and masses.  ….In [1583] a series of priests took shelter in the house of John Rigmaiden of Garstang, where they said mass and were visited by other Catholics. ..'
In 1585 he was discharged as master forester for destruction of the forest and deer. Many of the Rigmaidens had held this position (of viridar) before him.  He died soon after in 1587. He had a sister called Margaret North. 
The estate passed to his son, Walter, born in in or before 1557, (whose mother was Jane, daughter of Francis Morley of Wemington), and married in 1573 at Garstang Church to Ann, eldest daughter of Edward Tildesley of Weardley. They had a son, Thomas, and three daughters all of whom seem to have died before 1586, as they are not mentioned in his father’s will. In 1577 the Lancashire Commissioners reported that he was worth £40 in lands per annum, but “in goods poore”.
 In 1587 an Inquisition was opened in Preston touching on the fact that he was incapable of inheriting his father’s estate. The original manuscript is so mutilated and damaged that it cannot be read clearly. Walter was also a Catholic recusant, persecuted for his religion and ordered to pay fines, and soon after declared a lunatic and died between 1598 and 1602. It was then that his representatives sold the estate to the Fyffes, passing  later to the Spencers, then to Sir Thomas Gerard (later Lord Gerard) and the manor and its title passed out of the hands of the Rigmaiden family.

There was also a minor branch of the family living in Garstang in the 16th century. A Nicholas Rigmaiden died in 1521 and had a son and heir, John, then aged six. His son was also called John and there seem to have been some disputes in the 1550s and 1560s about land and entitlement to New Hall, Barnacre and Bradley House. John de Rigmaiden of Wedacre made a settlement in 1563 of New Hall, dovecote and a mill to the other John Rigmaiden. (see Fishwick, Garstang, Chethan Society 215)

  
Rigmaiden. Argent three stags' heads caboshed sable

The rest of the above is a précis taken from: 'Townships: Barnacre-with-Bonds', A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 7 (1912), pp. 315-320. 


More information about these early Rigmaidens can be found in the publications of The Chetham Society, The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire and the Lancashire Parish Register Society where wills, birth, marriage and death records and property documents are transcribed and discussed. History of the manors and estates is found in the Victoria County History for Lancashire and which can be read on the website British History Online.
From 1553 church parish registers began to be maintained recording the baptisms, marriages and burials of parishioners. This was done by Thomas Cromwell on the orders of Henry VIII and has inadvertently benefited the family historian. Many of these have been transcribed and the results are available on the Church of the Latter Day Saints’ website FamilySearch free of charge. Original copies of some registers can also be found on Ancestry,  Find my past and BMD Registers (for non-conformist registers). Thus from this time in the sixteenth century we can begin to plot the concentrations of Rigmaidens throughout the country and find, from early times,  a group in London, a handful of individuals in Yorkshire and Cheshire as well as the majority of occurrences in Lancashire.
I have recently discovered two and possibly three generations in the family tree prior to Thomas Rigmaiden, merchant of Liverpool from whom we are all descended or related. I have definitely ascertained his place and date of birth and  names of his parents, their marriage and probably the birth of his father  and so,in turn, his father’s name. I shall write more about his connection with the family at Wedacre and life in Liverpool in the next newsletter.