PULESTON, JOHN (c. 1583 - 1659), judge

was the eldest son of the Rev. Richard Puleston (born at Allington, Denbighshire, 1548), who was the fourth son of Sir Roger Puleston of Emral (died 1587). He was born at Kingsworthy, Hants, where his father (who also held the sinecure rectories of Llaneugrad, Anglesey, 1592-6, and Hope, Flintshire, from 1597) had been rector since 1596, on resigning the rectory of Astbury, Cheshire, which he had held since 1577. He followed his father to Oxford (entering Oriel College 22 May 1601), and to the Inner Temple, which he entered from Clifford's Inn on 24 May 1606, becoming reader and bencher to his Inn in 1634 and treasurer in 1646, and receiving his call to the Bar 8 July, 1614. His subsequent legal career is given in D.N.B. He succeeded to the Emral estate on the death, without children (1634), of his uncle George Puleston, brother and heir to Sir Roger (1566 - 1618). His wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Woolrych, of Dudmaston, Salop, and an earnest Presbyterian, was installed there with her infant children by the beginning of the Civil War, when they were forced to leave owing to the occupation and garrisoning of the house for the king (c. September 1642) by Sir John Hanmer; it was later alleged on Hamner's behalf that he occupied the house at Mrs. Puleston's request for the protection of the property, and did his utmost to prevent any depredations. The family, meanwhile, took refuge with neighbours, and although the house was retaken for Parliament temporarily c. March 1644, and finally towards the end of the year, the family does not appear to have lived there again until Puleston ceased to be judge in 1653, when he installed Philip Henry as minister of Worthenbury (of which he had bought the advowson) and tutor to his children, of whom the two elder, Roger (the heir) and John, had previously (1 May 1647) entered the Middle Temple. Henry, who lived at Emral till Puleston built him a house at Worthenbury, says of his patron that in renewing leases on the estate he substituted for the customary obligation of keeping a hound or hawk for the landlord that of keeping a Bible in the house. He was a member of the North Wales Composition Committee (1649), the Commission for the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales (1650), and of many parliamentary county committees for Flintshire and Denbighshire, 1647-57. He died at Emral, 5 September 1569.

His brother, Dr. RICHARD PULESTON, succeeded to the family rectories of Hope and Kingsworthy, and was the father of HAMLET PULESTON, successor to Jonathan Edwards as Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, who is separately noticed in D.N.B. His children, although tutored by Philip Henry, reacted against the religious and political views of their parents, and after the judge's death the family reverted to its traditional conformity.

Author

• Emeritus Professor Arthur Herbert Dodd, (1891 - 1975)

Sources

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: the members of the University of Oxford, ii, 1219
• Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (1813–20) (ed. Bliss), i, 433, ii, 777 n., iii, 544
• Macgeah and H. A. C. Sturgess, Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple (1949) (index)
• Hopwood, A Calendar of the Middle Temple Records (1903) (index)
• Hart and Wilkinson, The Middle Temple bench book being a register of benchers of the Middle Temple from the earliest records to the present time, with historical introduction (London 1912) (index)
• Lee, Diaries and letters of Philip Henry, M.A. of Broad Oak, Flintshire, A.D. 1631-1696 (London 1882) (index)
• Hanmer, A memorial of the parish and family of Hanmer in Flintshire out of the thirteenth into the nineteenth century (1876), 97-103
• Calendar of the Committee for Compounding with Delinquents, etc., 1643–1660, ii, 943, iv, 3160
• Calendar of the Committee for Advance of Money, 1642–56 (1888), ii, 591, 726
• Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (London 1911) (index)
• Burke's … Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage (1869 and 1913 ed.)

Further Reading

• Wikipedia Article: John Puleston

Additional Links

• Wikidata: Q16863571

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/