Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/222

 Bramston Bramston married in 1606 Bridget, daughter of Thomas Moundeford, M.D., son of Sir Edward Moundeford, knight, of Feltwell, Norfolk, by whom he had a large family, of whom six survived him, viz. three daughters, Dorothy, Mary, and Catherine, and as many sons, John [see, the younger]; Moundeford, who was created a master in chancery at the Restoration; and [q. v.] Sir John, the son, describes his mother as ‘a beautiful, comely person of middle stature, virtuous and pious, a very observant wife, a careful, tender mother;’ ‘very charitable to the poor, kind to her neighbours, and beloved by them,’ and ‘much lamented by all that knew her.’ She died in the thirty-sixth year of her age (whilst John was still at school at Blackmore, Essex) in Phillip Lane, Aldermanbury, and was buried in a vault in Milk Street church. Sir John continued a widower for some years, his wife's mother, Mary Moundeford, taking charge of his house. In 1631 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Lord Brabazon, sister of the Earl of Meath, and relict of Sir John Brereton, king's serjeant in Ireland. Brereton was her second husband, her first having been George Montgomerie, bishop of Clogher. Bramston's marriage with her was the revival of an old attachment he had formed as a very young man, but which Lord Brabazon had refused to countenance. The ceremony was performed at the seat of the Earl of Meath at Kilruddery, near Dublin. His son John, who accompanied Bramston to Ireland on this occasion, was by no means prepossessed by the appearance of his stepmother. ‘When I first saw her,’ he says, ‘I confess I wondered at my father's love. She was low, fat, red-faced; her dress, too, was a hat and ruff, which though she never changed to her death. But my father, I believe, seeing me change countenance, told me it was not beauty but virtue he courted. I believe she had been handsome in her youth; she had a delicate fine hand, white and plump, and indeed proved a good wife and mother-in-law too.’ She died in 1647, and was buried in Roxwell Church.

 BRAMSTON, JOHN, the younger (1611–1700), lawyer and autobiographer, was the eldest son of, justice of the king's bench [q. v.], bv Bridget, daughter of Thomas Moundeford, M.D., of London. He was born in September 1611, at Whitechapel, Middlesex, in a house which for several generations had been in possession of the family. After attending Wadham College, Oxford, he entered the Middle Temple, where he had as chamberfellow Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon. Throughout life he continued on terms of intimate friendship with Hyde, who presented him with his portrait, the earliest of him now known to exist, and engraved for the edition of the 'History of the Rebellion' published in 1816. He was called to the bar in 1635, and after his marriage in the same year to Alice, eldest daughter of Anthony Abdy, alderman of London, took a house in Charterhouse Yard, and began to practise law with considerable success, until, in his own words, 'the drums and trumpets blew his gown over his ears.' In accordance with his father's advice, he sold his chambers in the Temple on the outbreak of the civil war, and his wife dying in 1647, he removed with his family to his father's house at Skreens. At his father's death in 1654 he succeeded to the property. In the new parliament, after the dismissal of Richard Cromwell, he served as knight of the shire for Essex, and supported the motion for the Restoration. At the coronation he was created a knight of the Bath, after refusing a baronetcy on account of his dislike to hereditary honours. Subsequently, he frequently acted as chairman in committees of the whole house. In 1672 an accusation was brought by Henry Mildmay, of Graces, before the council against him and his brother of being papists, and receiving payment from the pope to promote his interests. The chief witness was a Portuguese, Ferdinand de Macedo, whose evidence bore unmistakable signs of falsehood. Charles II is said to have remarked concerning the affair, that it was 'the greatest conspiracy and greatest forgerie that ever he knew against a private gentleman.' To the first parliament of James II Bramston was returned for Maldon, and in several subsequent parliaments he