Cotton Gargrave

Sir Cotton Gargrave (1540–1588) was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1571 and 1572.

Wragby Church, Nostell Priory, Burial place of Sir Cotton Gargrave and father Sir Thomas Gargrave

Early life

Gargrave was the son of Sir Thomas Gargrave, High Sheriff of Yorkshire.[1] He resided at Nostell Priory and at Kingsley, Yorkshire.[2]

Political career

In the northern rebellion of 1569, Gargrave commanded a force of 200 men from the West Riding of Yorkshire. He was elected Member of Parliament for Boroughbridge in 1571 and 1572. In 1583 he was appointed High Sheriff of Yorkshire and knighted in 1585.[3] He was Custos Rotulorum of the West Riding of Yorkshire from 1584 to 1588. In his later years, he was forced to mortgage many of the extensive properties left him by his wealthy father.

Family

Gargrave married firstly Bridget Fairfax,[4] daughter of Sir William Fairfax of Steeton, West Yorkshire, and High Sheriff of Yorkshire. He married secondly Agnes (or Anne) Waterton, daughter of Sir Thomas Waterton of Walton and Sandal, Yorkshire.[5]

He was a friend of Elizabeth's ambassador to Scotland, Thomas Randolph, and invited him to Nostell in May 1586.[6]

Over the years, the Gargrave family earned what one observer called a reputation for romantic entanglements "remarkable for crime and misfortune." His wife became embroiled in lawsuits after his death. Thanks to ongoing lawsuits and ill-considered liaisons, "the whole family sunk into obscurity."[7] His son Thomas by his first wife was executed for the murder of a servant boy.[8] His son Richard by his second wife inherited an enormous patrimony from the Gargrave estates in Yorkshire, but dissipated it by drinking, gambling and exravagence and was eventually reduced to riding with the pack horses and died with his head on a pack saddle in an old inn.[9] Among his daughters; Elizabeth, married William Fenwick of Stanton, Northumberland,[10] Anne married Peter Venables, MP and secondly the equerry Sir Edward Bushell, and Mary was a Maid of Honour to Anne of Denmark.

References
  1. Miscellanea Genealogica Et Heraldica. Hamilton, Adams, and Company. 5 March 1868 – via Google Books.
  2. Walks in Yorkshire: Wakefield and its Neighbourhood, William Stott Banks, 1871.
  3. "History of Parliament". Retrieved 27 September 2011.
  4. Flower, William (1881). The Visitations of Yorkshire in the Years 1563 and 1564: Made by William Flower, Esquire, Norroy King of Arms. Harleian Society. p. 133 – via Internet Archive. levet yorkshire gargrave.
  5. Manning, James Alexander (1851). The Lives of the Speakers of the House of Commons, from the Time of King Edward III to Queen Victoria. G. Willis. p. 222 – via Internet Archive. cotton gargrave.
  6. Thomas Wright, Queen Elizabeth and Her Times: A Series of Original Letters, vol. 2 (London, 1838), p. 293, has "Cotton Mowgrave".
  7. Lodge, Edmund (1838). Illustrations of British History, Biography, and Manners. J. Chidley. p. 159 – via Internet Archive. cotton gargrave.
  8. "Nostel Priory (Nostell Priory)". www.british-towns.net.
  9. "GARGRAVE, Richard (1575-1658), of Kinsley and Nostell, Yorks. - History of Parliament Online". www.historyofparliamentonline.org.
  10. The Publications of the Surtees Society. Surtees Society. 5 March 1860. p. 9 – via Internet Archive. cotton gargrave.
Political offices
Preceded by
Francis Wortley		 Custos Rotulorum of the West Riding of Yorkshire
1584–1588		 Succeeded by
John Savile
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