Is your name Mainwaring?

The Mainwaring family history extends for hundreds of years to Plantagenet times. They married into the principal landed gentry of Cheshire and produced at least eight branch lines in the county and fourteen in nine other counties.

Their original home was at Warmingham, near Middlewich. The family acquired the manor of Baddiley, or part of it through marrying an heiress to the Praers, and other members settled at Bromborough, Croxton, Kermincham, Merton, Nantwich and Smallwood.

Tombs to the family can be found particularly at Acton and Over Peover churches.

The Warmingham line became extinct in 1288 and the armes were taken over by Sir William Mainwaring, the fifth of the Peover line, who fought at Gascony in 1393.

Another of the line was Sir Randolf Mainwaring who took a prominent part in national affairs. He was in Ireland on the King's service and was Forester or Mara and Mondrum (the residue of which is now essentially Delamere Forest) and in 1397 was a royal archer to Richard II.
John Mainwaring was knighted in France in 1513 and was Sheriff of Flintshire on three occasions.

Sir Randle Mainwaring served as Sheriff of Chester in 1605 and it was he who rebuilt the ancestral home, Peover Hall. His son, also Sir Randle, was Sheriff of Limerick, 1605, Sheriff of Cheshire, 1619, and Mayor of Chester, the same year.

The line passed to Sir Philip Mainwaring and then to Sir Thomas who married Mary Delves of Doddington. He was Sheriff of Chester, 1657, and created a Baronet in 1660. Suspected with other Cheshire gentlemen of complicity in the Monmouth Rebellion he was arrested and imprisoned.

The last of the true Mainwarings was Sir Henry who died without issue in 1797. His mother having married twice, he devised his estates to his half-brother Thomas Wettenhall who took the family name with the property. This second line became extinct five generations later.

It is said that the difficulty with searching the family tree of the Mainwarings is that in old deeds there are 131 variations in the spelling of the surname!


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