Family and Education

b. 6 Oct. 1629, o. (posth.) s. of Ambrose Pudsay of Bolton Hall by 2nd w. Bridget, da. of William Pennington of Muncaster, Cumb. m. by 1651, Jane, da. of Sir Thomas Davison of Blakiston, co. Dur., 3s. (2 d.v.p.) 4da. suc. gdfa. 7 Oct. 1629.1

Offices Held

J.p. Yorks. (W. Riding) July 1660-70; commr. for assessment (W. Riding) 1661-74, Lancs. 1663-74, col. of militia ft. (W. Riding) 1661-?73; commr. for corporations Yorks. 1662-3, loyal and indigent officers 1662; dep. lt. (W. Riding) by 1663-?73; commr. for oyer and terminer, Northern circuit 1665.2

Gent. of privy chamber by June 1660-d.3

Capt. Duke of Buckingham’s Ft. 1673-4.

Biography

Pudsay’s ancestors had held a moderate estate in Yorkshire since the end of the 13th century. The family had been in financial and religious difficulties since at least the reign of Elizabeth. Pudsay’s great-grandfather was imprisoned for recusancy at York, where he died, and more recently two of his uncles had been educated at St. Omer. Pudsay was under suspicion during the Protectorate, having a kinsman at the exiled Court who had been a royalist colonel during the Civil War. He was arrested with Sir Henry Slingsby and other Yorkshire Cavaliers in 1658, but not brought to trial, and accused of complicity in Booth’s rising in the following year.4

At the Restoration, Pudsay applied for a grant of the mines royal in Yorkshire, co. Durham and Northumberland. According to local folk-lore his grandfather had not only mined silver on his estate but worked it into counterfeit shillings. Pudsay does not seem to have been successful either in this application, or in one made in conjunction with Sir Jordan Crosland and Sir Francis Cobb covering all six northern counties ‘to repair their fortunes, lessened by loyalty’. In 1660 he was compelled to sell the manor of Barforth to Barrington Bourchier for £10,050.5

Pudsay stood for Clitheroe, six miles from his residence, at the general election of 1661 and was seated on petition. He was the first of the family to enter Parliament, but he was not an active Member of the Cavalier Parliament. He was named to only eight committees, the last being in January 1667. As a militia officer, he was responsible for liaison between the lords lieutenant of Yorkshire and Lancashire during the rising of 1663, but his financial troubles increased, and he probably did not appear in the House after the fall of Clarendon, though Sir Thomas Osborne reckoned him a follower of the Duke of Buckingham and the Opposition included him among the court party. His whole estate was mortgaged and he was outlawed for debt in 1668. He was described as ‘a privy-chamber man and a colonel in the country, over head and ears in debt, and hath drawn most of his officers to be bound for him and thereby undone many’. In 1673 Buckingham gave him a regular commission in his regiment, then stationed in Ireland, but on 17 July 1674 the King wrote to the lord lieutenant that it was ‘not convenient for several reasons that Colonel Ambrose Pudsay be continued captain of foot’. He was granted £100 compensation on 5 Aug. three days after he had been buried at St. Michan’s, Dublin. His will describes him as of the Inns, where he was presumably in sanctuary from his Irish creditors. His son married the daughter of Henry Marsden, mortgagee of Bolton Hall, and regained possession; he was three times elected for Clitheroe as a Whig between 1695 and 1702.6

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Irene Cassidy

Notes

• 1. Pudsay Deeds (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. lvi), 57-63; C142/462/132.
• 2. CSP Dom. 1667, p. 191; HMC 8th Rep. pt. i (1881), p. 275.
• 3. Carlisle, Privy Chamber, 164.
• 4. Pudsay Deeds, 19, 54, 56, 60; Thurloe, vii. 13; Cal. Comm. Comp. 3052; EHR, ii. 344.
• 5. Pudsay Deeds, 56, 61, 284; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 290.
• 6. CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 299, 303; 1673-5, p. 312; Cal. Treas. Bks. ii. 524; iii. 527; v, 325, 787, 806; Pudsay Deeds, 62-63; Harl. 7020, f. 35; Dublin Par. Reg. Soc. iii. 203.