Family and Education

bap. 23 June 1663, 1st s. of Roger Puleston of Emral by Jane, da. of Sir Roger Mostyn, 1st Bt., of Mostyn, Flints., sis. of Thomas Mostyn†.  educ. Eton 1678.  m. (1) 16 Sept. 1684, Catherine (d. 1685), da. and h. of William Edwards of Plas Newydd, Chirk, Denb., 1s. d.v.p.; (2) lic. 3 July 1691, aged 29, Martha (d. 1726), da. of Sir William Ryder, merchant, alderman of London and commr. for Tangier, of Bethnal Green, Mdx., 1s. 2da.  suc. fa. 1667. Kntd. 12 Nov. 1680.1

Offices Held

Biography

Puleston’s family background offered a compound of different influences. His grandfather had been a Cromwellian judge; his father, educated as a Presbyterian, had been suspected of complicity in Booth’s rising, and had later married into a Royalist family; while his stepfather was Sir John Trevor*, on whose recommendation, or so we may presume, Puleston was knighted in 1680. He was named to the commission of the peace shortly after reaching his majority, but removed in April 1688 for refusing consent to the repeal of the Test Act and Penal Laws. Returned unopposed to the Convention as knight of the shire, and re-elected in 1690, he did not appear on either the Whig or the Tory black lists, but was marked as a Whig in Lord Carmarthen’s (Sir Thomas Osborne†) analysis of the new Parliament in March 1690. His appearance in the following December in a list of Carmarthen’s supporters, probably drawn up in connexion with the projected attack on the Marquess in the Commons, may have been the product of his connexion with Trevor. By April 1691, however, Robert Harley* was listing him as a supporter of the Country party. An inactive Member, Puleston nevertheless demonstrated his concern for matters of local importance. In January 1692 he and the Member for Flint Boroughs, Thomas Whitley, successfully petitioned the Treasury on behalf of their county for a hearing in the case of a proposed grant of waste lands ‘bearing on’ the river Dee. On the same theme Puleston participated three years later in the protests against the grant to the Earl of Portland of the North Wales lordships. His argument to the Treasury Board in May 1695 was that ‘the revenues of these lordships did support the government of Wales, by paying the judges and other officers their stated salaries; and if given away there would be a failure of justice’. During the 1694–5 session he was included in Treasury Secretary Henry Guy’s* list of ‘friends’, in connexion with the Commons proceedings against Guy for corruption. At the 1695 election he transferred from the county to the Boroughs constituency, and thereafter seems to have shifted his political ground too, from opposition to Court. Originally cast as ‘doubtful’ in the forecast for the divisions of 31 Jan. 1696 on the council of trade, and subsequently reclassified as against the ministry, he signed the Association promptly, and was listed as voting in March for fixing the price of guineas at 22s. and then, on 25 Nov. 1696, in favour of the attainder of Sir John Fenwick†.2

Puleston died of a fever in London on 28 Feb. 1697, and was buried in his family’s vault at Gresford, Denbighshire. He left £3,000 in trust to provide an income for his wife and children, with instructions to raise further sums, including portions of £5,000 each for the daughters, from mortgages on landed property. He had, however, accumulated debts of about £15,000, and since his entire estate was estimated at a mere £1,000 a year these arrangements could not be met, despite a collusive suit in Chancery. Eventually, in 1725, his son, Thomas Puleston, obtained a private Act to enable him to sell the Chirk property which Puleston had obtained through his first marriage. Other lands in Denbighshire, in Puleston hands since the early 16th century, were also disposed of, and on Thomas’ death without issue in 1734 the Emral estate itself passed to the representative of another branch of the family.3

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: D. W. Hayton

Notes

• 1. IGI, Flints.; Chirk Castle Accts. 1666–1753 ed. Myddelton, 200–1; Mar. Lic. Vicar-Gen. (Harl. Soc. xxxi), 186; Mems. of Stepney ed. Hill and Frere, 244; Le Neve’s Knights (Harl. Soc. viii), 128, 348.
• 2. Cal. Treas. Bks. ix. 1468; Bodl. Carte 130, ff. 355–7; Cobbett, Parlty. Hist. v. 978–9; Bull. IHR, sp. supp. 7, p. 11.
• 3. HMC Lords, n.s. vii. 339–40; Add. 46399 B, ff. 74–95, 97–101; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 656; CJ, xx. 414; Arch. Camb. ser. 4, i. 174; ser. 5, i. 213; ser. 6, iv. 168.