Catalogue description Documents relating to the Bond family of Redbrook

Content and organisation of the MSS.

The collection contains a number of items of more than purely local interest. The woodland management accounts for the late 17th century and early 18th century (A1-3) give a rare and detailed picture of the way a private forest estate was run at this period, and the household bills of Christopher Bond, 1721-47 (A8-17) are also unusually complete. There is unfortunately very little correspondence in the collection, but a number of items contain glimpses of the family's patrons and political connections (F14, 16, 20). In this context, the accounts for building work on Coleford chapel, 1742 (A14) are of interest, since they show the family sided with their Whig relations, the Duttons of Sherborne, in the associated dispute, which was a local political issue from 1739 to 1742 [see also D678 FAM SETT 57D].

The papers concerning the family's tenure of Forest offices are of considerable interest to historians of the Forest of Dean. They include a large number of draft and copy petitions concerning forest rights and the iniquities of forest officials (X4, 8, 9, 15, 17, 21, 24, 28, 29); Roger Taverner's inquisition about the customs of the Forest (X3), taken in 1565 at the same time as his Survey of Woods [D3921 I/29]; and, most significantly, the presentments of the regarders of the Forest to an eyre held at Mitcheldean in 1656. This eyre, though known to have been planned, was not previously known to have been held [C. E. Hart, Royal Forest, 1970, p. 148]. A small group of correspondence and orders (X20-22, 24, 26) throws some light on the crucial years after the Restoration when the survival of the Forest was at first imperilled and then assured.

The military papers of Edmund Bond (1710-63) are also of outstanding interest. As a Captain in Major-General Read's regiment of foot he took a draft of recruits out to Gibraltar and Minorca in 1744, and his accounts and correspondence concerning the journey and their activities on arrival are fascinating and detailed. In 1745, Edmund was back in England, raising a troop for the Earl of Berkeley's regiment against the Young Pretender, which was stationed at Bath. Again, the muster rolls, accounts and correspondence provide a detailed picture of the type of men who enlisted and the conditions in which they served.

Of more specialist archival interest are three items in the collection. The first of these is what appears to be part of the official seal of the Earl of Nottingham as Justice in Eyre of the Forests south of the Trent, attached to a document dated 1600 (X7). It is a single-sided seal with the Earl's personal signet on the reverse. A second curiosity is a late 16th century attempt at a facsimile of a Saxon charter for Coventry. Also of note is the arbitration award of Walter Mey in a testamentary dispute of 1516, written in a strikingly unusual hand, conforming to neither late medieval nor Renaissance italic models.

By the time the documents in this collection were deposited very few traces remained of their original archival order, and their present arrangement has largely been determined during cataloguing.

Bond family of Redbrook, Gloucestershire

deposited by Messrs. Ticehurst Wyatt & Co., solicitors, of Cheltenham, 11 December 1963

Provenance of the MSS.

The papers described below were deposited by Messrs. Ticehurst Wyatt & Co., solicitors, of Cheltenham, and contain no items later in date than 1763. How the documents came to be in the possession of the solicitors is unclear, but in view of the complete absence of late 18th or early 19th century documents, it seems possible that they were deposited for safe keeping with one of Ticehurst Wyatt's predecessor firms after the death of Captain Edmund Bond in 1763. As these papers are a distinct archive group they have been dealt with separately from other documents deposited by the firm.

• Forest of Dean
• Armed forces

Genealogy of the Bond family

The Bond family seem to have been settled in Newland and St. Briavels as early as the reign of Edward I (Visitation of Gloucester, 1682-3). They were an armigerous family of lesser gentry status who never acquired a baronetcy, but who managed to preserve and gradually enlarge their estate through advantageous marriages and the occupation of minor public offices.

The papers mainly concern the members of the family living during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Christopher Bond of Platwell in Newland (d. 1618) married Anne Elly in 1564, and many of the earlier documents in the collection reflect her family's landed interests in the parish. Christopher's son Richard Bond of Redbrook (1566-1633) married Blanch, daughter of George Catchmay of Mitchel Troy (Monmouth), which brought the family the Wyeseal estate and extensive interests in Herefordshire and Monmouthshire. Richard Bond had three sons, George Bond (1593-1658), who died without issue and who held public office as a tax collector for the Forest area (D3554; D2026); Christopher Bond (1595-1668) and Richard Bond, junior (c.1598-1652). Christopher Bond inherited the principal family estate based at Redbrook, and was probably the most active public official among the family. It was he who amassed the collection of petitions relating to forest rights, and who seems to have been a verderer of the Forest and one of the regarders in 1656 (D2026/X14). Like his brother, he was also active as a tax collector (D2026/X32). Richard Bond junior became a merchant venturer in Bristol, and acquired a large estate in Virginia, where he died in 1652. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Lloyd of Bristol, and was the only one of the three brothers to leave a family. His son George Bond (1643-1731) inherited both his uncles' Wyeseal and Redbrook estates, but had difficulty in recovering possession of his father's Virginian property when he came of age (D2026/E24). George seems to have pursued his uncles' commitment to public office, and was churchwarden, overseer and surveyor of highways for Newland during the 1670s. In 1671 he married Mary Perkins of Philston (Monmouth), and thereafter produced a large family. His elder son, George Bond (b. 1677), seems to have predeceased his father, and his younger son, Christopher Bond (1682-c.1747), inherited the family estates in 1731, although he seems to have been managing his elderly father's affairs for some years previously (D2026). The estate was depleted by dowries given to William Probyn and John Morgan of Court Blethin, who married Christopher's sisters Sarah and Mary, and further diminished by the dowries given on the marriage of his daughters Theresa and Jane to Sir Charles Hardy and James Lennox Napier Dutton of Sherborne (Glos.) and Co. Meath. Christopher himself married twice. His first wife, Alice, bore him two sons, Christopher Bond (b. 1704) and Edmund Bond (1710-1763), and in 1711 he married Jane Whorwood of Holton (Oxon.), who produced his two surviving daughters. According to the Visitation of Gloucester, 1682-3, Christopher senior died in 1739, but it is clear from the occurrence of his distinctive handwriting that he was alive at least until 1747. Christopher junior was commissioned as a Captain in 1745 and 1750, and seems like his younger brother Edmund to have pursued a military career. The latest item in the collection is a probate copy of Edm. Bond's will, dated 1763.

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