Rafe (Ralph) de MAINWARING, JUSTICE OF CHESTER

Sources:

The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants to the American Colonies or theUnited States, by Gary Boyd Roberts, 1993, 407
The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants to the American Colonies or theUnited States, by Gary Boyd Roberts, 1993, 407

Notes:

                   Ancestral File Number: 8WK7-T5
Ancestral File Number: 8WK7-T5The earl had another dau., whose legitimacy is questionable, namely, Amicia,* m. to Ralph de Mesnilwarin, justice of Chester, "a person," says Dugdale, "of very ancient family," from which union the Mainwarings, of Over Peover, in the co. Chester, derive. Dugdale considers Amicia to be a dau. of the earl by a former wife.But Sir Peter Leicester, in his Antiquities of Chester, totally denies her legitimacy. "I cannot but mislike," says he, "the boldness and ignorance of that herald who gave to Mainwaring (late of Peover), the elder, the quartering of theEarl of Chester's arms; for if he ought of right to quarter that coat, then must he be descended from a co-heir to the Earl of Chester; but he was not; for the co-heirs of Earl Hugh married four of the greatest peers in the kingdom."* Upon the question of this lady's legitimacy there was a long paper war between Sir Peter Leicester and Sir Thomas Mainwaring---and eventually the matter was referred to the judges, of whose decision Wood says, "at an assize held at Chester, 1675, the controversy was decided by the justices itinerant, who, as I have heard, adjudged the right of the matter to Mainwaring." [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, pp. 365-6, Meschines, Earls of Chester]