The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Mainard : "Mainardus homo Rogeri Pictavensis," is mentioned in Domesday as an under-tenant in Essex and Lincolnshire; and either he or another of the name held in Wilts, Hants, and Norfolk, before the Conquest. "M. Mainart or Mainard, Ralph, John, and the estate of the Mainards in Normandy are spoken of in the Norman Exchequer Rolls, 1180-1198."—The Norman People. The early notices of this family are very scanty. "In the hydarium of Henry II. Maynard was certified to hold one hide and half in "Cherleton" (Charlton), but as the paramouncy of his estate is withheld, no clue is furnished for tracing it to the Domesday lord. Maynard does not occur among the feudatories of the Barony of Wahull in the Liber Niger, and it may therefore be presumed that family had not then acquired interest here."—Baker's Northamptonshire. Croxton Abbey held five bovates in the fee of Griseley, the gift of Robert Maynard, senior: and John Mainard had property in Fencot and Moorcot 7 Ed, I.—Bullington and Ploughley's Oxfordshire. Edward Maynard, in the previous reign, sold to the monastery of Sheppey some lands at Milsted, in Kent.
The pedigree of the Viscounts Maynard only commences in the following century with John Mainard of Axminster in Devonshire, who served in France under the Black Prince, and was appointed Constable of Brest in 1352. Sixth in descent from him we find another John Maynard, sitting in Queen Mary's first Parliament as Burgess for St. Albans, and numbered among the thirty-nine stout Protestants who were indicted in the King's Bench for absenting themselves from the House rather than join in accepting the Pope's authority in the realm. He had two sons, 1. Ralph; and 2. Sir Henry, father of the first Lord Maynard.
Ralph's descendants lived at Sherford, in the parish of Brixton, which passed from them to the Drakes. A younger son named Alexander settled at Tavistock, and was the father of Sir John Maynard, Serjeant-at-law, described by Fuller as "one of the biggest stars of the constellation of pleaders; the bench seeming sick with long longing for him to sit thereon." He was a man of high character and ability, and took an earnest part in the struggle against Popery that culminated in the Revolution of 1688. He lived to be upwards of ninety, and to be presented at Court after King William's landing. The King, on being told of his great age, observed that he must have outlived all the lawyers that had been his contemporaries. "Ay, and I might have outlived the laws themselves," replied the old man, "but for the happy coming of Your Majesty." His son left two coheiresses; one married to Sir Henry Hobart (ancestor of the Earl of Buckinghamshire), the other to the Earl of Stamford.
The other successful cadet, to whom we must now revert, Sir Henry Maynard, an able and ambitious man, had achieved his fortune more than one hundred years before as Secretary to the Lord Treasurer Burghley. He purchased the old estate of the Lovaines, Estaines-in-Turri, or Little Easton in Essex; thus seating himself in the county where the original mention of the name is found, though the manor held by the Mainard of Domesday—Wickford, is in an altogether different district. He sat as member for St. Albans in three of Queen Elizabeth's parliaments, in another as knight of the shire, and served as Sheriff during the last year of her reign. He was knighted either by her or King James—authorities differ on this point—and died in 1610. Th: eldest of his eight sons, William, "being one of the most considerable persons in the county, appears in the list of the first baronets" the following year; was created Lord Maynard of Wicklow in Ireland in 1620; and Lord Maynard of Estaines in the English peerage in 1628. His successor, the second lord, "was one of those truly worthy patriots who did not run headlong with the incendiaries of the last century" (Morant wrote in 1766) "but were for taking proper measures to deliver this nation from the Tyranny of the Army, and restoring peace to these distracted Kingdoms; for which he and the rest of these patriots were impeach'd of high treason in 1647." Among them was his uncle Sir John Maynard, M.P. for Lostwithiel, who, for "exerting himself that the army might be disbanded," was expelled from the House of Commons, and committed to the Tower as a traitor.[1]
Lord Maynard was a zealous promoter of the Restoration, and Charles II., on ascending the throne, wrote to commend him with his own hand. "I do assure you there is no man upon whose affection and unbyassed resolutions to serve me I do look with more confidence then upon yours; and therefore you may reasonably presume that my kindness is proportionable. I hope it will not be long before I have a good occasion to manifest it." Nor had he, in common with other suffering loyalists, to rest content with fair words and empty promises; for the King named him Comptroller of his Household, with a seat in his Privy Council; and James II. retained him both at this office and at the Council Board. The direct line ended with his grandson Charles, the last of another family of eight sons, of whom five died young, and three successively bore the title. None of them ever married. Charles, who thus became the sixth Lord Maynard, and lived a bachelor to the ripe age of eighty-five, obtained a Viscountcy in 1766, with remainder to his nearest kinsman in blood, Sir William Maynard of Walthamstow (descended from Secretary Maynard's third son). On his death in 1775, Sir William's son, Sir Charles (Sir William himself had died three years before) accordingly succeeded to this new honour, and transmitted it to a nephew named Henry, with whom it expired in 1865. There had been an heir male, for this last Viscount had a son who died the year before him, leaving two little daughters. To the eldest, Frances Evelyn—then barely four years old—he bequeathed the whole of his estates; and she married in 1881 Francis Greville Lord Brooke, son of the fourth Earl of Warwick.