Venables Genealogy 
by Sir Peter Leycester

Biography:

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Sir Peter Leycester, 1st Baronet (also known as Sir Peter Leicester) (3 March 1614 – 11 October 1678) was an English antiquary and historian. He was born at Nether Tabley, near Knutsford, Cheshire, England, the eldest son of Peter Leycester (1588–1647) and Elizabeth Mainwaring, daughter of Sir Randle Mainwaring of Over Peover, Cheshire. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford in 1629 as a gentleman commoner but did not graduate. In 1632 he was admitted to Gray's Inn.

When the Civil War broke out he was appointed one of the King's Commissioners of Arrangement for Cheshire. He was at Oxford in June 1646 when the city surrendered to Thomas Fairfax. Consequently, he was excluded from other responsibilities and given time to develop his interest in antiquarian research. Among the subjects he studied was the pedigree of the Mainwaring family. In 1642 he married Elizabeth Gerard. In 1649 he purchased a transcription of the section of the Domesday Book relating to Cheshire.

 

In 1655 he had a period of imprisonment, but after the Restoration he was released and returned to the bench as a justice of the peace. In this capacity, according to a modern historian, he harangued grand juries with warnings about the constant dangers of sedition and revolution, and the need to maintain vigilant surveillance over all Roman Catholics, especially Jesuits, as well as on republicans, puritans and all those who threatened the existing social order.

 

He was created a baronet in 1660 as a reward for his loyalty to the royalist cause. He was involved in the English Civil War on the royalist side and was later made a baronet. He  became involved in a controversy with the Mainwaring family. He developed a library at his house at Tabley Old Hall and made improvements to the house and estate, including building a private chapel on the house grounds. He was an active and conscientious justice of the peace and used his position on the bench to expound his staunchly conservative and royalist political views.

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His work:

His major historical work appeared in 1673, its full title being Historical Antiquities in Two Books; the first dealing generally with Great Britain and Ireland; the second containing particular remarks concerning Cheshire, and principally of "the hundred of Bucklow". To which is appended a transcription of the Domesday-Book, in relation to Cheshire it is generally referred to with the shorter title of Historical Antiquities.

 

In the book, Leycester presented a discussion relating to the legitimacy of Amicia, the wife of Ralph Mainwaring, as to whether or not she was the legitimate daughter of Count Hugh Cyveliok.  This led to a dispute with Sir Thomas Mainwaring of Peover, one of his descendants, who in 1673 published a "Defence of Amicia". Leycester responded later that year with "An Answer to the Book of Sir Thomas Manwaringe". In 1675, the traveling judges at the Chester Assizes ruled in favor of Amicia’s legitimacy.

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