Richard Bold, MP

Family and Education s. and h. of Richard Bold of Bold and Whiston by Elizabeth, da. of Sir Thomas Gerard of Kinsley and Brynne. m. (2) Jane, da. of William Mordant of Oakley, Beds., 1s. illegit.

Offices Held

Sheriff, Lancs. 1576-7, 1590-1, j.p. from c.1573.

Biography The Bolds had been established at Bold since at least the thirteenth century. Bold himself was able to provide more horses and horsemen than anyone except the Earl of Derby in the muster of 1574. He entered Parliament on a by-election in January 1585 vice Sir Gilbert Gerard, and so could have served on the subsidy committee (24 Feb. 1585). Like a number of Lancashire gentlemen, Bold had a recusant wife, and he himself received a cross against his name on Lord Burghley’s map of Lancashire, indicating that, in Burghley’s opinion, he required coercion in religious matters. As sheriff of Lancashire in 1577 he had not been as active against recusants as the Council desired. Then in May 1582, one of his servants submitted to the government information against papists in the county, and of their resort to Bold’s house. A priest was supposed to have come over the dam head at Bold and been conveyed into the garden, and so over the drawbridge into the house. The informer had further ‘seen meat go forth of the kitchen ... into his chamber’. Two years later Bold was reported to Burghley as a recusant, and in 1590 he was a justice ‘of fair and ancient living’ who ‘maketh shew of good conformity, but not greatly forward in public actions for religion’. That was the year in which he became sheriff of Lancashire for the second time. The following year a report of the Privy Council declared that ‘he hath of late reformed his wife and family’.

Bold died on 1 Apr. 1602. A stone panel bearing his arms is in the nave of Prescot parish church. Bold Hall, a moated gothic building of stone, together with lands of great value passed to his only son Thomas.

Baines, Lancs. v. 22-4; Gregson, Lancs. Fragments, 183; Lansd. 43, anon. jnl. f. 171; Leatherbarrow, Lancs. Eliz. Recusants (Chetham Soc. n.s. cx), 86-7, 109; Gillow, Burgley’s Map of Lancs. 41; Prescot Churchwardens’ Accounts (Chetham Soc. n.s. civ), 154.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603 Author: N.M.S. Notes