The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Mainwaring : the modern form of Mesnil-Garin, a well-known Norman family. Ranulph de Mesnilgarin was Lord of Mesnilgarin near Coutances, and in 1086 held twelve lordships in barony from Hugh Lupus. (Domesd.) This Ranulph affords one of the exceptional instances of a Domesday patriarch now represented by heirs-male; but then his posterity almost assumed the proportions of a tribe. "Altogether the house of Mainwaring threw out the extraordinary number of at least fourteen different branches, besides the three bastard branches of Nantwich, Croxton, and Great Warford, In nine other counties they occur: viz. Berks, Gloucester, Kent, Devon, Lancaster, London, Salop, Stafford, and Worcester; in some of which families of several generations subsisted."—Ormerod's Cheshire.

Their original seat was at Warmincham, where the two sons of Ranulph, Richard and Roger, succeeded each other, and were in turn benefactors to Chester Abbey; the one in 1093, the other previous to 1119. Roger's son and heir, Sir Ralph, was Justice of Chester in the latter part of Henry II.'s reign, and married Amicia, the daughter of his Earl, Hugh Kevelioc. This great alliance is one of the chief illustrations of the family; but the legitimacy of the bride is hotly contested by Sir Peter Leycester, and appears at the best to have been doubtful. The county historian "conjectures her to have been the Earl's daughter by a first but unproved marriage, and consequently of half blood only to Randle Blundeville, and to the four sisters who were co-heiresses of the lands of the Earldom."

Sir Roger, the issue of this marriage, was the father of Sir Thomas, and Sir William, ancestor of the Mainwarings of Over-Peover. Sir Thomas was the heir, but his line expired with his son, who left three co-heirs, Maud, Margery, and Joan. Maud, as the first born, conveyed Warmincham to her husband, Sir William Trussell, the younger, of Cubbleston, of the Northamptonshire house of Marston-Trussell.

The lords of Over-Peover thus succeeded to the representation of the family, and adopted the coat of the elder house. Their township, first held by the Ranulphus of Domesday, had been granted by Sir Roger Mainwaring to his second son in the time of Henry III. for the annual rent of one soar sparrow-hawk; and continued in the name till quite the end of the eighteenth century, or very nearly six hundred years. "Over Peeover," says Sir Peter Leycester, "hath near unto it that stately house and great demesne, which hath been the continued seat of that great name of the Mainwarings, from whence there is none of the great races of that name (though they be many) but do desire to derive their original. And well may they do so; for, saith Mr. Cambden, here that notable, antient family of Menilwarin, commonly called Mainwaring, is seated; out of which Raulf married the daughter of Hugh Kevelyock, Earl of Chester." Several of their ancient monuments remain in the church; but the fifth lord of the manor, who first bore the arms of the head of the house, lies in Acton Church, where, by his will (made in 1393 before departing for the wars of Guienne), he desired to be buried, "with his picture in alabaster to cover his tomb:" bequeathing to it at the same time "a piece of Christ's cross, which the wife of his half-brother Randle had then in her keeping." This half-brother, styled by the Earl of Chester armigerum suum, was his successor, and served as Sheriff in 1412:—one only of the many members of this family to be found on the roll.

Several Mainwarings took part in the Civil War: one, a grandson of Sir Randle, thirteenth in succession at Peover, was killed at the siege of Chester fighting for the King: another, of the Whitmore stock, served for the Parliament under General Skipton: and a third, belonging to the Kermincham branch, was a distinguished leader on the same side, and defended Macclesfield against the Royalists under Col. Lee.

The sixteenth heir of this ancient house, Sir Thomas, was created a baronet at the Restoration; but the line only continued for three more descents; and Sir Henry, the last of his race, died unmarried in 1797. Peover passed away by his will to an utter stranger in blood, the son of his mother's second marriage with the rector of Walthamstow; and the old home that had been the cradle of the Mainwarings for so many centuries thenceforward knew them no more. The adopted heir, Thomas Wetenhal, took his half-brother's name, and a baronetcy followed in the next generation.

But the good old Cheshire house survived, and has flourished for yet another hundred years, though no longer in its native County Palatine. The Mainwarings of Whitmore, in whom the representation of the Randulphus of Domesday is now vested, descend from the tenth lord of Peover, Sir John, who, though he died at the age of forty-five, was already blessed with a family of thirteen sons and two daughters. Edward, the ninth son, married in 1518 the heiress of Whitmore, and settled in her Staffordshire home, where his posterity have taken root. The house was garrisoned for the Parliament during
the Civil War; and in the '45, Edward Mainwaring put himself at the head of his tenantry, and marched to Derby to oppose the Jacobites. James, a cadet of this house, bought Bromborough, near Chester, about the end of the seventeenth century thus bringing back the old name to the county where it had so long been held in honour: but in 1850 his descendants migrated to Otley Park, in Shropshire, that had come to them through a Kynaston heiress.