Sir Roger Puleston, III, Kt., MP

Family and Education b. c.1566, 1st surv. s. of Roger Puleston I of Emral by his w. Magdalene (Maud), da. of Thomas Hanmer. educ. Brasenose, Oxf. 1582, aged 16; I. Temple 1585 or 1586. m. Susanna, da. of (Sir) George Bromley of Hallon in Worfield, Salop, s.p. suc. fa. 1587. Kntd. 28 Aug. 1617.1

Offices Held

J.p. Denb. and Flints. from c.1591; dep. lt. Flints. by 1595, commr. Exchequer 1595, sheriff 1597-8; dep. steward, Denbighland and Bromfield-and-Yale by 1601; custos rot. Denb. from 1596; member, council in marches of Wales 1601.2

Biography Puleston’s marriage with a nice of the lord chanellor secured him not only free admission to the Inner Temple, but a lifelong patronage to which he owed much of his prestige, and which made him an object of jealousy when it was proposed in 1601 to enrol him in the council in the marches of Wales. The anonymous protest sent to Cecil at the time accused him of ignorance of the law, and of desiring the place only to promote his private factions and to ‘repair his decayed estate’. There is not much sign of a ‘decayed estate’ in the princely mansion (later enlarged, demolished in 1926) which he rebuilt at Emral, and he was involved in only one notable lawsuit. The only occasion when he appeared as a ‘stirrer of factions’ was in the notorious Denbighshire election of 1588, when he countenanced the disorderly proceedings by which his relative John Edwards triumphed over the numerically superior supporters of Puleston’s second cousin William Aylmer. Aylmer was unfortunate enough to serve a subpoena on Puleston while the House was sitting, ‘to answer unto a bill ... containing almost 40 sheets of paper’, and Puleston raised the matter in the House, 12 Feb. 1589. Though Aylmer was found to have committed a breach of privilege he was let off, and told to wait until the end of the session before recommencing hostilities. As knight of the shire in this Parliament Puleston would have been eligible to attend the subsidy committee (11 Feb.) and, in his next, the subsidy (26 Feb. 1593) and a legal committee (9 Mar.)3

In 1595, during the panic aroused by Spanish raids on Cornwall, Puleston and his fellow deputy lieutenant Thomas Mostyn were specially commended by the Council for their diligence in raising the Flintshire musters; it was also a sign of his growing influence that five years later a complaint from the Denbighshire borough of Ruthin about unfair distribution of taxes was referred by the Council to Puleston and two Denbighshire gentlemen.4

He missed the next two parliaments, but was returned once again in 1604. As an experienced shire knight, he was named to attend the conference at which King James laid out his initial plans for the Union (14 Apr. 1604) and another to explore proposals to compound for wardship (22 May); he was also one of those named to provide evidence of local abuses by purveyors (7 May) and was appointed to committees for bills concerning the finances of the royal Household (18 June) and the annexation of estates to the Crown (4 July).18

Puleston was named to the committee investigating the privilege claim of the Flint Boroughs MP, Roger Brereton, on 3 Feb. 1606. Later the same day he was ordered to attend a conference with the Lords about recusancy legislation, and he was subsequently one of the delegation who presented the Commons’ grievances to the king (14 May). Among his committee nominations, that for the Welsh cottons bill (10 Mar.) was of most obvious interest to his constituents.19 Puleston did not appear in the records of the next session until 10 Mar. 1607, when he was included on the committee for a naturalization bill. When the session was delayed by the illness of Speaker Sir Edward Phelips, Puleston was among those ordered to consider the appointment of a substitute (23 Mar.), but eight days later he was noted as being absent, and he does not seem to have returned to the House until 4 June, when he was named to the committee for an estate bill for the Stanley family, who owned substantial lands in Flintshire. Towards the end of the session, he was one of the committee ordered to collate procedural precedents from the Journal (19 June).20

Puleston was added to the privileges’ committee at the start of the fourth session (9 Feb. 1610), and on 13 Mar. he made an interim report on the disputed by-election at Bridgnorth, caused by a vacancy created upon the promotion of his brother-in-law Edward Bromley* to an Exchequer judgeship. Later, in the subsidy debate of 14 July, he secured a proviso allowing the Welsh counties to delay payment of their quotas until collection of the mise due upon the accession of King James was complete; half the counties affected paid up to a decade late, while the rest remitted nothing at all to the Exchequer. Puleston was also one of those appointed to draft a game bill, upon the king’s personal recommendation (22 Mar.), and was named to the committee for a bill to confirm the title of contractors purchasing Crown lands (5 July).21

At the 1614 election Puleston was replaced as knight of the shire by Robert Ravenscroft; knighted in August 1617, he did not enjoy the honour long, dying on 17 Dec. 1618. The Emral estate passed to his brother George, and subsequently to his cousin John Puleston, a justice of Common Pleas during the Commonwealth.22 The judge’s grandson, another Sir Roger, sat in the Commons three times at the end of the century. The senior branch of the family died out in the male line in 1732, after which date the estates passed away through several collateral branches.23

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629 Author: Simon Healy Notes 1. CHES 3/81/24. 2. Dwnn, Vis. Wales ed. S.R. Meyrick, 310. 3. Al. Ox.; CITR, i. 341-2. 4. Dwnn, 310; Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 78; CITR, i. 341-2; Worfield par. reg. transcript in Salop RO. 5. CHES 3/81/24. 6. Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 165. 7. CHES 3/94/18. 8. JPs in Wales and Monm. ed. Phillips, 59-66, 97-104. 9. APC, 1595-6, pp. 75-6; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 40; SP14/33; NLW, Chirk B91. 10. List of Sheriffs comp. A. Hughes (PRO, L. and I. ix), 254. 11. HEHL, EL64. 12. P. Williams, Council in the Marches, 354-5. 13. E179/283/12. 14. DWB (Puleston of Emral). 15. HP Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 260-1. 16. STAC 5/P63/37; C2/Eliz/P1/63, 2/Eliz/P12/27; Dwnn, 310. 17. CHES 3/81/24, 3/94/18. 18. CJ, i. 172a, 202a, 222b, 241b, 252a. 19. Ibid. 263a, 281b, 309a. 20. Ibid. 351a, 354a, 378a, 386a, 1035a. 21. Ibid. 392a, 409b, 414a, 446a, 449b. 22. Shaw, ii. 165; NLW, Puleston 32; CHES 3/94/18. 23. DWB (Puleston of Emral).

• Burke, Bernard, Sir. A genealogical and heraldic dictionary of the peerage and baronetage of the British Empire. London : Harrison 1869. page 922