I’ve found another early eighteenth-century will by a member of the Bushell family of Bath, containing further valuable revelations about the family’s connection with Major Peter Boulton. In 1715 Richard Bushell made his will. He was the son of John Bushell who died in 1703 and the grandson of Edward Bushell the elder who died in 1701. Richard Bushell’s will is usefully packed with references to members of both the Bushell and Collibee families. He mentions his uncle Edward Bushell the younger (his father’s brother), and his cousins Richard, William, George, Benjamin and Anne Collibee, the children of his aunt Mary Collibee. Richard also refers to his mother Ann Bushell, the main beneficiary of his will, his uncle William Matravers and his cousin Richard Matravers, thus providing confirmation that the John Bushell who married Ann Matravers at Bath Abbey in 1689 was in fact Richard’s father.
Thomas Hearne, ‘View of Bath from Spring Gardens’, mid-18th century via http://www.jimandellen.org
However, for our purposes, the most significant sentence in Richard Bushell’s will is the one that refers to his aunt Landick and her son-in-law Peter Boulton, as well as the latter’s wife Posthuma and their children Alice and Peter. I had already discovered from other family wills that Elizabeth, the sister of Richard Bushell’s father John, had married into the Landick family, but I was unclear about the relationship between Elizabeth Landick née Bushell and Posthuma Landick who married Peter Boulton. This reference reveals that Posthuma was Elizabeth Landick’s daughter. I already knew that Posthuma was born in 1676 and that her father David Landick died just before she was born (does this explain her odd Christian name?). Now I know that her mother Elizabeth was born a Bushell: she was the daughter of Edward Bushell the elder and the sister of (among others) John Bushell, father of Richard. This would explain how Peter Boulton came to meet his second wife, since his first wife was another Elizabeth Bushell, though her precise relationship with the family of Edward Bushell the elder remains unclear.
The reference to Peter Boulton’s family in this will is also interesting because it mentions Peter’s two children, Peter and Alice. I already knew from other wills that Alice, the only surviving child of Peter’s first marriage, was still alive in the early decades of the century, but this is the first reference in a family document to Peter Boulton the younger. As I’ve noted before, Peter Boulton, son of Peter Boulton, a gentleman of All Hallow Barking, London, matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1725. He was 15 at the time, meaning he was born in about 1710, five years before Richard Bushell wrote his will. I’ve found no further records of Peter Boulton junior and he isn’t mentioned in his father’s will of 1741, suggesting that he didn’t survive.
Richard Bushell’s will is also a useful resource for understanding the connections between the Bushell and Collibee families of Bath. I’ll explore these in another post.
