Amicia

Sir Peter Leycester, 1st Baronet (also known as Sir Peter Leicester) (3 March 1614 – 11 October 1678) was an English antiquarian and historian. He was involved in the English Civil War on the royalist side and was subsequently made a baronet. He later compiled one of the earliest histories of the county of Cheshire and as a result of this became involved in a controversy with the Mainwaring family as regards whether Earl of Chester Hugh de Kevelioc was the legitimate father of a daughter called Amicia.

Sir Peter Leycester (1614–1678)


Leycester was the eldest son of Peter Leycester of Nether Tabley, Cheshire, by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Randle Mainwaring, bart., of Over Peover, in the same county. He became a gentleman commoner of Brasenose College, Oxford, on 13 Oct. 1629, but did not graduate, and entered himself at Gray's Inn on 20 Aug. 1632 (Harl. MS. 1912). At the outbreak of the civil war he was appointed by the king one of his commissioners of array for Cheshire, and had in consequence to leave Nether Tabley at the close of 1642. He was at Oxford at the time of its surrender to Fairfax in June 1646, and obtained accordingly the benefit of the articles then agreed to. He betook himself to London, where he compounded for his estates for 747l. 10s. The next four years of his life were passed in the garrisons of the king, apparently as a civilian. For some implication in the political movements of 1655 Leycester, after being imprisoned for a while in Chester Castle, was taken to London, and gave his bond for his future good behaviour. His loyalty was rewarded with a baronetcy on 10 Aug. 1660.

Leycester is author of a work of "great research and accuracy", entitled "Historical Antiquities in two books; the first treating in general of Great Brittain and Ireland; the second containing particular remarks concerning Cheshire, and chiefly of Bucklow Hundred. Whereunto is annexed a transcript of Doomsday-Book, so far as it concerneth Cheshire" &c., fol., London, 1673. Ormerod incorporated it with his ‘History of Cheshire,’ 1819. It is usually referred to with the shorter title of "Historical Antiquities" and is one of the earliest histories of the county of Cheshire.

In his Antiquities, Sir Peter Leycester makes the following comment:


 * I cannot but mislike the boldness and ignorance of that herald who gave to Manwaring of Pevor the quartering of the earl of Chester's arms which device was never done before the reign of queen Elizabeth in the time of Sir Randle Manwaring late of Pever the elder for if he ought of right to quarter that coat then must he be descended from a coheir to the earl of Chester but that he was not for the coheirs of earl Hugh as you see before married four of the greatest peers of the kingdom viz the earl of Huntingdon the earl of Arundel the earl of Derby and the earl of Winchester's son and heir another natural daughter married one Bacun and had issue Richard Bacun founder of the priory of Roucester in Staffordshire and another as presumed for the reasons given married William le Belward de Malpas



What has happened here is that a "Herald" has revised the Mainwaring Coat of Arms to reflect the decent of the Mainwarings from the Earl of Chester, and thus from William the Conqueror through a child of Henry I.

In 1642 he married Elizabeth Gerard (1620–1679), the third daughter of Lord Gilbert Gerard of Gerards Bromley, at Dutton, Cheshire. They had three sons and three daughters. He died at his home at Nether Tabley on 11 Oct. 1678 and was buried at Great Budworth, Cheshire. His memorial is in the north chapel of St Mary and All Saints Church, Great Budworth. He was succeeded in the baronetage by his eldest son, Sir Robert Leicester (1643–84)

Leycester left a large collection of unpublished manuscripts, they have been calendared by the Historical Manuscripts Commission (1st Rep. Appendix, pp. 46–50). Among them is a treatise entitled ‘Prolegomena Historica de Musica P. L.,’ which could only have been written by an accomplished musician. Mention may also be made of a theological dissertation ‘On the Soul of Man,’ dated 1653, which is accompanied by a long correspondence upon the subject between Leycester and his old college tutor, Samuel Shipton, rector of Alderley, Cheshire.

An engraving from a miniature of Leycester at Nether Tabley is given in Ormerod's ‘Cheshire,’ vol. i. p. liv.; another from a portrait, probably by Lely, is prefixed to pt. i. of the Chetham Society's edition of the ‘Amicia Tracts.’

Sir Thomas Mainwaring (1623-1689)
Mainwaring was born on 7 April 1623, and was the eldest surviving son of Philip Mainwaring of Peover and Baddeley, Cheshire, by Ellen, daughter of Edward Mynshull of Stoke, near Nantwich, in the same county (Wotton, Baronetage, ed. 1771, ii. 116–17). He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, as a commoner on 20 April 1637, but did not graduate, and was admitted a student of Gray's Inn on 2 Feb 1640.

Mainwaring’s ancestors had held Over Peover since the Domesday Book, but his great-uncle Sir Philip Mainwaring was the first to enter Parliament. His father, a ship-money sheriff, fought for Parliament in the Civil War as a colonel of horse. Upon the outbreak of the civil war, Mainwaring cast in his lot with the parliamentary party, and took the covenant and the engagement oath. Mainwaring himself does not seem to have held a military command. Though more concerned with antiquarian pursuits than politics, Mainwaring was a decimator and one of the court candidates for Cheshire in 1656 and he served the office of high sheriff of Cheshire in 1657. He was removed from the commission of the peace in October 1659 after Booth’s rising.

Returned for the county to the Convention parliament at the general election of 1660, he was an inactive Member of the Convention. He was appointed only to the committees for the continuation of judicial proceedings, for the inquiry into unauthorized Anglican publications, and for regulating fees, and did not speak.

Presumably he gave satisfaction to the Government, for he was created a baronet early in the second session and his lease of fines and perquisites in the hundred of Macclesfield was renewed.

He attended the Duke of Monmouth on his Cheshire progress in 1682 in a coach-and-six (see: Roger Whitley), and he was disarmed after the Rye House Plot and bound over at the assizes. He was released from his recognizances in April 1684, and actively supported his son at the general election in the following year. He was listed as in opposition to James II, and during the "Glorious Revolution" accompanied Booth on his march into Staffordshire.

He died on 28 June 1689 at the age of 66 and laid to rest in Over Peover. In 1642, at age 19, he had married Mary Delves, daughter of Sir Henry Delves, 2nd Baronet, of Dodington and had 6 sons and 6 daughters. His only surviving son John succeeded to the baronetcy and was also an MP. The baronetcy became extinct on the death of the fourth baronet, Sir Henry, the first baronet's great-grandson, in 1797; but the title was revived in 1804 in favour of Henry Mainwaring, son of Thomas Wetenhall, a stepbrother of the fourth baronet.

In 1659 Sir Philip Mainwaring (great-uncle to Thomas Mainwaring and not his father of the same name) proposed that the eminent antiquarian William Dugdale write a county history of Cheshire along the lines of his successful publication on Warwickshire which had been published in 1656. This proposal reflected the interests and concerns of Mainwaring, his relatives and wider circle during the troubled 1640s and 1650s. Those who regarded themselves as the rightful governors of the county had been profoundly disturbed by a series of challenges to their status and authority during the Civil War and its aftermath. The projected county history, intended to be richly illustrated with engravings of coats of arms and funeral monuments, would have emphasised the elite families’ claim to be the county’s legitimate governors. In the event, Dugdale’s ‘History of Cheshire’ was never written. Sir Philip might have become distracted by political developments as he took up a seat in his last parliament and hoped for some mark of favour from the restored king. Perhaps it was more difficult than anticipated to secure the interest of the senior gentry in the proposed work. Alternatively, the explanation might lie in Thomas Mainwaring’s decision to ask Dugdale to write a manuscript history of the Mainwarings of Peover, exclusively celebrating the ancestry and achievements of his own family, prompted perhaps by his promotion to the rank of baronet in 1660.

The Controversy


Leycester having stated that, in his opinion, Amicia, wife of Ralph Mainwaring, was not Hugh de Kevelioc's lawful daughter, Sir Thomas Mainwaring of Peover, who, with Leycester, was descended from her, immediately published a ‘Defence of Amicia,’ 12mo, 1673.

Leycester's contributions to the controversy were:


 * ‘An Answer to the Book of Sir Thomas Manwaringe … entituled “A Defence of Amicia,”’ 8vo, London, 1673. The original manuscript is among Gough's books in the Bodleian Library.


 * ‘Addenda, or some things to be added in my Answer to Sir Thomas Manwaring's Book: to be placed immediately after Page 90’ [of the ‘Answer’], 8vo, London, November 1673.


 * ‘Two Books: the first being styled A Reply to Sir Thomas Manwaring's Book entituled An Answer to Sir Peter Leicester's Addenda. The other styled Sir Thomas Manwaring's Law-Cases Mistaken,’ 2 pts. 8vo, London, 1674.


 * ‘A Reply to Sr Thomas Manwaring's Answer to my two books. The second reply. Together with the Case of Amicia truly stated,’ 8vo, London, 1676. The copy in the British Museum is annotated by Leycester.


 * ‘An Answer to Sir Thomas Manwaring's Book, intituled An Admonition to the Reader of Sir Peter Leicester's Books, 8vo, London, 1677.

Mainwaring's other writings on the subject are:


 * ‘A Reply to an Answer of the Defence of Amicia,’ 12mo, London, 1673.


 * ‘An Answer to Sir Peter Leycester's Addenda,’ 12mo, London, 1673–4.


 * ‘An Answer to Two Books,’ 12mo, London, 1675.


 * ‘An Admonition to the Reader of sir P. Leycester's Books,’ 12mo, London, 1676.


 * ‘A Reply to sir Peter Leicester's Answer to sir Thomas Mainwaring's Admonition,’ printed for the first time by W. B. Turnbull, 12mo, Manchester, 1854, from the transcript by William Cole, contained in the fortieth volume of his collections in the British Museum, Additional MS. 5841, ff. 125–140.


 * ‘The Legitimacy of Amicia … clearly proved,’ 12mo, London, 1679. This was the last shot after Leycester had died.

The controversy only closed with the death of Leycester (1678), who, in the opinion of the most competent judges, got the worst of it. Wood states that at the assizes held at Chester in 1675 the dispute was decided by the justices itinerant, who, as he had heard, adjudged the right of the matter to Mainwaring. The College of Arms, under the lead of Sir William Dugdale, also declared in favour of Amicia's legitimacy (cf. Dugdale, Baronage, i. 41). A contemporary humorist ridiculed the affair in some verses entitled ‘A New Ballad made of a high and mighty Controversy between two Cheshire Knights,’ 1673 (reprinted in Beamont's Introduction to the ‘Amicia Tracts’ from Ashmolean MSS. No. 860, iii. art. 1, and No. 836, art. 183).

The entire series of the tracts written by Mainwaring and Leycester on this subject were reprinted by the Chetham Society from the collection at Peover, under the editorship of William Beamont (3 pts. 1869).

Sources and Links

 * A Defence of Amicia, daughter of Cyveliok, Earl of Chester, wherein it is proved that Sir Peter Leicester ... hath without any just grounds declared that Amicia to be a bastard / by Sir Thomas Mainwaring. 1673;


 * Tracts written in the controversy respecting the legitimacy of Amicia, daughter of Hugh Cyveliok, earl of Chester, A.D. 1673-1679. Printed for the Chetham society;