Thomas Malbon

Thomas Malbon was the son and heir of George Malbon of Haslington, in the parish of Barthomley, co. Chester, by his wife Matilda, daughter of William Leversage. He was born on March 14th, 1577-8 ; and was under age when his father died (Nov. 11th, 1592), and when his father's Inquisition post mortem was taken at Wich Malbank [Nantwich] on May 9th, 1593.
Having obtained livery of his father's lands and home-stead at Bradeley by writ dated Aug. 20th, 1599, he, in 1616, according to a tablet with armorial carvings that once adorned old Bradeley Hall, rebuilt the home of his ancestors.
For many years, however, he was closely connected with Nantwich, where he followed the profession of the law, and where he doubtless had a town-house. There, too, he married (Feb. 14th, 1597-8) his first wife, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Richard Clutton, lawyer, of Nantwich. For many years he was steward to Sir Ranulph Crewe, of Crewe, Kt., and presided over his Manor Court. In 1626 and 1627 he fulfilled the office of Churchwarden at Nantwich ; and during those years he kept the Parish Registers. Just before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, he signed the "Remonstrance of the Inhabitants of the County Palatine of Chester," which was the declaration of those who favoured the side of the Parliament in the coming struggle. As the war proceeded, and the Parliament gradually gained the ascendancy, he was appointed one of the Committee of Sequestrators in Nantwich — a local "Committee of Public Safety" — for the purpose of fining or imprisoning all who still retained Royalist opinions, or who refused to subscribe to the "Covenant" for Presbyterian uniformity ; as well as for seizing the estates of wealthy "Delinquents," and accounting for rents, sales of goods, and all moneys to the Council of War. In this official position Thomas Malbon must have been intimately acquainted with the proceedings of the war around the garrison town of Nantwich ; and it is not unlikely that through his influence Edward Burghall,in 1644, obtained preferment at Haslington. Thomas Malbon's duties as sequestrator ceased when Nantwich was dis-garrisoned Jan., 1646-7 ; and as he was then in his 69th year, he probably retired to Bradeley Hall. In 1651 he wrote his very interesting Account of the Civil War, and, dying in 1658, was buried* in the parish church at Barthomley, where a mural marble placed to his memory is still to be seen in the south aisle of the church, inscribed as follows : —
VNDERNEATH LYETH BVRIED THE BODIE OF THOMAS MALLBON OF BRADLEY GENT: ONE OF YE ATTORNIYES BEFORE THE IVDGES OF CHEST WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE THE 2[1st] DAY OF IVNE 1658.

• The gravestone which once covered the Malbon vault in Barthomley Church is at the present time in the graveyard on the north side of the Church. It bears the simple inscription,—"Thomas Malbon of Bradley ,Gent., Died June 21, 1658,"— and a coat of arms, a shield charged with two bends company; and for crest, an oak stump couped, with branches, leaves, and acorns, engraved on brass by "George Wodnothe. Near this stone are three others with oval brasses to the Malbons. (See inscriptions in Hinchliffe's Barthomley, p. 34-5) All have been taken out of the church to form the footpath!
  

From the introduction to Memorials of the Civil War in Cheshire and the Adjacent Counties by Thomas Malbon (1578-1658):

• Archive.org
• Online Books Page at the University of Pennsylvania

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Affixed to the wall by the door of the Crewe chapel are four brass plaques, dating from the seventeenth century and commemorating members of the Malbon family of Bradley Hall, Haslington; the Hall, which no longer exists, stood about four miles to the north-west. A stone tablet now affixed to the south wall of the south aisle records another Malbon, Thomas, sometime attorney at Chester, who died in 1658. Born in 1578, Thomas Malbon practised law in both Nantwich and Chester, and rebuilt Bradley in the opening decades of the seventeenth century. Like Sir Ranulphe Crewe, he was too old to fight in the civil war, but Malbon clearly supported the parliamentary cause, playing a minor role in the wartime administration of the area. In 1651, after the war was over, he wrote ‘A breefe & true Relacon of all suche passages & things as happened & weire donne in and aboute Namptwich in the Countie of Chester & in other plac[es] of the same Countie’. A lively and colourful history of the civil war 1642-48, focussing on the area around Nantwich, but encompassing most of Cheshire, Malbon’s account is one of the principal sources for the history of the civil war in Cheshire. It was almost immediately paraphrased and plagiarised by Edward Burghall, vicar of Acton in the 1650s, who cobbled together his own manuscript account of the war in Cheshire, ‘Providence Improved’. In 1889, both accounts were edited by James Hall and published by the Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society.

Cromwellian Britain - Barthomley Church - Cheshire, The Cromwell Association

Number 47 in The Malbons: Eight Hundred Years of Family History (2005) by Barbara Lynch