14 Ellen Molyneux married John Bond They had a daughter Mary Bond b 1514

Ellen Molyneux married John Bond.

Now who was John Bond?  Initially when I began my research I thought that John Bond was not a very important person.  We was not a Lord or a Knight, and after all the information available about previous ancestors, I thought that the interesting part of our family tree was going to get a bit ordinary.

How wrong I was!!!

John Bond was the son of Thomas Bond a very wealthy merchant in Coventry.

This is an extract from a book about the Bond's Almes-Houses

The Antiquities of Coventry by Sir William Dugdale

He was morever within this place of Babbelake and Almshouse founded by one Thomas Bond a rich Merchant of Coventre werein at the time of the said survery were ten poor men and one woman kept, to pray for the soulds of the said Tho Bond, his grandfather, father and all Christian souls.  All which were at the time maintained at the charge of Tho Bond grandchild to the said Thomas by whose left will the said Almes House was to have been built and such poor maintained with a priest and to that end certain lands put into Feosses hands of 49l 11s 7d per ann. Value.  Out of which was paid to those poor people every Saturday 6s8d which amounted to 17l 6s 8d per ann.

This hospital was founded in 1506 by
 Mr Tho Bond draper sometime ago and Alderman of this City for ten men and one woman, who gave certain lands for maintenance thereof, which his son John Bond continued during his life.

Inside the hospital, it used to be the site of a school

But Thomas the son of John claimed those lands as his own, whereupon the City sued him in Chancery and had a decree against him, which cost them a great sum of money for certain lands valued at 20l per annum!

Bond's Hospital is an almshouse established for old bedesmen.

 It is situated on Hill Street, Coventry, England, built around the same courtyard as the old disused buildings of Bablake School.

The hospital was founded in 1506 by Thomas Bond, a draper who became Mayor of Coventry in 1497.Although most of the street frontage was rebuilt in 1832, the building essentially still retains all its original features, and the hospital is now a grade II* listed building. It consists of twelve bed-sitting rooms and a common room, and the garden at its rear contains a portion of the old city wall.

Ford's Hospital was a similar 16th century foundation for women almoners.


The ownership and operation of Bonds Hospital is now vested in the Bond's and Ford's Hospital Charity, part of the Coventry Church Municipal Charities.


(If you intend to visit, be aware of the difficulties with finding a park in this dead end street!)

The ceiling of the Guildhall

 A visit to the Coventry Guildhall was a fantastic experience, the building is rather beautiful, as the photos depict.

St. Mary's Hall is a guildhall built in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, first built 1340-42 and much altered and extended circa 1392–1430, The Building has a vaulted undercroft which is currently a restaurant.

History

The archway entrance to the guildhall in 1810

The entrance now

The guildhall served as the combined headquarters of the united guilds of the Holy Trinity, St. Mary, St. John the Baptist and St. Katherine. Following the suppression of guilds in 1547, for a time it served as the city's armoury and (until 1822) its treasury, as well as the headquarters for administration for the city council until a new Council House was officially opened in 1920.

In November 1569, following the Catholic Rising of the North, Mary Queen of Scots was rushed south from Tutbury Castle to Coventry.

 Elizabeth I sent a letter, instructing the people of Coventry to look after Mary.

She suggested that Mary be held somewhere secure such as Coventry Castle. However, by that time it was too decayed and Mary was instead first held at the Bull Inn, Smithford Street before being moved to the Mayoress's Parlour in St. Mary's.

 Following the defeat of the rebels, Mary was once more sent north to Chatsworth in May 1570.


George Eld, mayor of Coventry (1834–5) was an antiquarian who encouraged appreciation of Coventry's ancient buildings. He initiated the restoration of the fourteenth-century interior of the mayoress's parlour.

In 1861, the artist David Gee painted The Godiva Procession Leaving St. Mary's Hall, which is now on display in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry.

Restoration work by the council received the approval of the committee of the Coventry City Guild in 1930. Improvements had included the repair of the door at the north entrance to the crypt and providing glass and grilles in the windows of the fore crypt. Outside the crumbling exterior stonework was stabilized.

The stained glass windows of the Kings

A beautiful tapestry of Royal figures adorns a whole wall 

Further regarding the Council and Parliament

Council chambers

In the absence of official returns to the Parliaments of 1482-1523, several names of Coventry members may be supplied from other sources, and it is possible that on some occasions the city followed its custom of sending the recorder.

Sir Robert Onley, woolman, twice mayor in the 1480s, was returned in 1485; Richard Cook, mercer, a former sheriff, was accompanied by John Smith, goldsmith and lawyer, in 1491 and by Henry Marlar, mayor in 1496, in 1495.

 The recorder, Ralph Swyllyngton, and Richard Marlar, mayor in 1509, were the city's members in 1523; they were thanked in 1524 for relating the business of the Parliament to the city council. Two of Swyllyngton's successors as recorder  also sat in Parliament: Roger Wigston, a Leicestershire gentleman who had previously represented Leicester, in 1529 and 1542, and Edward Saunders, serjeant-at-law, in 1542.

Council chambers

The treasury

Wigston was a prominent merchant of the staple and also, as a lawyer, an influential royal servant: it is on this last account that he may have secured election at Coventry. Wigston's colleague in 1529 was John Bond, draper, mayor in 1520, whose name appears in a parliamentary list of 1533. (his son in law)

 In Edward VI's Parliament in 1547, Coventry's members were Christopher Warren, draper, mayor in 1542, and Henry Porter, the city steward; and in 1553 they were James Rogers, vintner, mayor in 1547, and John Tallants (Tallons or Talontes), goldsmith, mayor in 1545 and 1562.

Biography     from the internet

John Bond’s grandfather had settled in Coventry where he prospered as a draper. His father achieved the mayoralty, purchased an estate and provided in his will of 18 Mar. 1506 for the foundation of the Bablake almshouse in the city. Bond’s inheritance made him one of the wealthiest men in Coventry and, although he continued in the family trade and became, like his father, a merchant of the staple, he was able to marry into a cadet branch of the Molyneux family of Sefton, Lancashire, and by his death had himself obtained arms: his brother-in-law Sir Edmund Molyneux became a justice of the common pleas in 1550.

At some time before 1515 Bond bought land at Little Bromwich, near Coventry, where he imparked some 30 acres and, with the consent of the bishop and the rector, endowed a chapel so that his tenants might attend mass when floods prevented their reaching the parish church. He also acquired some interest in his wife’s ancestral home, for in his will he was to style himself of Sefton.

In the certificate of the musters taken by Thomas, Marquess of Dorset in 1522 Bond was said to be worth 500 marks in goods and to have lands worth £30 a year. His mercantile interests stretched to places as far apart as Southampton and York and, although he dealt primarily in cloth, he was able to supply anything from fish and madder to timber and iron. On at least one occasion he was forced to sue for payment for cloth supplied

It is possible, but unlikely, that Bond was the London draper who was granted a pardon in 1509. A second pardon, five years later, may have been occasioned by service in the French war of 1513: a John Bond, yeoman, had then been appointed to serve and in 1515 the Coventry merchant shared with the soldier and courtier Sir Edward Belknap in the grant of a wardship.

But Bond was to be most active in the affairs of his own city. His mayoral term was an eventful one. He was obliged to bring a chancery suit against Thomas Harvy for his refusal to serve as sheriff: the plea may well have been unsuccessful as in the following year the city ordained heavy fines, ranging from £100 to £20, for such refusal to accept office.

In the winter of 1520 the city faced a dearth of grain with which Bond coped by first organizing a census and a record of the provisions available, together with an estimate of the rate at which they would be consumed, and then by bringing extra food into the city at his own expense. Although this represented only a fraction of the city’s needs, he was officially thanked for his pains.

At about this time, probably during Bond’s mayoral year, several heretics were burnt at Coventry during an episcopal visitation, including one Thomas Bond, shoemaker. It is not known whether John Bond played any part in these proceedings.

In 1518 he had been named an overseer in the will of William Pysforde the younger, one of the city’s Lollard circle, and his father may have had similar connexions, but their religious foundations bespeak their orthodoxy: the poor men in the elder Bond’s almshouse were to repay their benefactor by praying for his soul and he also left bequests to two religious houses in Coventry.

Bond’s service and standing in the city explain his return to the Parliament of 1529. He may already have been related to his fellow-Member, the recorder Roger Wigston, by the marriage of his daughter Dorothy to Roger Gillot of Leicester, a kinsman of Wigston’s mother.

His name appears on a list drawn up by Cromwell early in 1533 and thought to be of Members opposed to the bill in restraint of appeals: as a draper, he may have been one of several Members whose objections in principle were reinforced by their fear of the possible commercial repercussions of the measure.

 His appearances on a further list compiled by Cromwell probably in December 1534 is not easy to explain. The Members concerned, several of whom besides Bond had figured in the earlier list, are thought to have had a particular, but unknown, connecion with the treasons bill than on its passage through Parliament.

If they formed a committee, Bond’s inclusion may be taken as an indication of his standing as a Member. He was presumably returned again to the Parliament of 1536, in accordance with the King’s general request for the re-election of the previous Members

The date of Bond’s death is unknown, but the will which he made on 3 Dec. 1537 (which has a conventional preamble) was proved on the following 9 July.

He gave £10 yearly for his son Thomas ‘to find him in the law’ and made provision for his five married daughters. He had had difficulties with his father’s almshouse: the elder Bond had instructed his feoffees, including his son John, to build and maintain it and this had been done, the income from the appointed lands being paid over each year.

 John Bond’s attempt to transfer possession of the lands to the Trinity guild of Coventry had failed and he now charged his executors, his wife and his brother-in-law Dr. Anthony Molyneux, rector of Sefton, to make a final offer of ‘the said lands as were appointed or like in value and as good’ to the guild: if this was again refused his son was to resume the lands and make other provision for the continuance of the almshouse

St Helen's Church Sefton - Rev Anthony Molyneux

A small, decorated chapel in the Norman architectural style is known to have existed by 1291,^[2] when the building's worth was estimated at £26 19s 4d in the Valor of Pope Nicholas IV. No part of this original chapel exists today, however during building works at the East Window in the early 2000s, substantial Norman floor tiles were discovered and are now displayed in the Lady Chapel.

By 1320, the original building had been completely removed and replaced with a more contemporary Decorated structure, which incorporated a small nave with pointed, geometric tracery windows and pitched roofline. A west steeple with angle buttresses, a cornice and parapet with beehive-shaped pinnacles and distinctive tall spire was also built adjoining it. The spire was partially rebuilt following damage by severe gales in 1802.


Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, a series of alterations or additions, which may have incorporated a chancel or Lady chapel, seem to have been made to the structure. Evidence of this can be seen in the West window of the north aisle, which is curvilinear in style and shape, and postdates the 14th-century structure.

The land was first consecrated in 1170,and a private chapel for the Molyneux family built soon after. The history of the land before this is unknown, but the distinctive oval shape of the churchyard suggests that it may have been used as Saxon burial ground in pre-Conquest Britain.

During the reign of King Henry VIII prior to the English Reformation, the church was given an extensive rebuild. The 14th-century tower was retained, but everything else was removed and a traditional Tudor church in the Perpendicular style was built. This incorporated a new nave and chancel with a clerestory, side aisles and chapels to the north and south, a two-storey porch to the south and small vestry to the east.

The north chapel is the Lady Chapel, and the south chapel, now known as the Molyneux Chapel, was once the Chantry of St Mary.

The vast majority of the church as seen from the south elevation is of new stone dating from this rebuild in the 1530s. However, the east bay of the north aisle uses stonework dating from the 14th century, and the west bay from the 15th century, suggesting that much of the masonry of the earlier structure was incorporated into the new Tudor building.
The smaller windows, rough joint with the tower, lack of embattled parapets, and large sections of arch mouldings which make up the North wall all suggest that this was the case. Within the chancel, a 15th-century sedilia and piscina in a four-arch arcade, and an ogee-arched aumbry are located to the South of the altar and predate the current structure.


Some time in the late 16th century, a range of typically Elizabethan, rectilinear windows in the late Perpendicular style were installed along the south aisle,flooding the church interior with light. They are plain but contain fragments of pre-Reformation glass set into leaded panels.