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Major James Jolly (1600-1666) was Provost
Marshal General of Lancashire and Quartermaster General to the
Parliamentary Army of Sir Thomas
Fairfax. He served in Colonel Duckenfield's Regiment of Foot and was
involved in the Battle of Chester, the Manx Rebellion and led his own
company of foot during the Plantation of Ireland.
Inset: Colonel Robert Duckenfield, Civil War Commander |
In his edition of The Note Book of the Rev Thomas
Jolly, 1671-93, and an Account of the Jolly Family of Standish, Eaton and Altham
(Chetham Society, Vol XXXIII, 1894), Henry Fishwick provides the
following account of the life of Major James Jolly:
"James Jolley, the eldest son of Thomas Jolley of Bickenshaw in Abram, in the parish of Wigan, was born in the year 1600. When quite a young man he went to live at Gorton, where he was engaged in the then very profitable business of a clothier. Here he met with Elizabeth Hall, the daughter of John Low of Denton, and widow of John Hall of Clock House, a small farm near Droylsden, and to whom he was married at the Manchester Collegiate Church 21st February, 1625-6.
"In 1635 he occupied a tenement (probably for business purposes) in Milner's Lane, Manchester, as he was presented at the Court Leet at Easter that year for
'laying a dunghill' there.
"On the breaking out of the Civil War he became a soldier, and attached himself to the Parliamentary Army, in which he soon rose to distinction, his promotion being rapid, and honours following each other fast …
"On formation of the first Manchester Classis on 2 October, 1646, he was elected as a lay representative for Gorton, but as he held strong independent religious views he did not act.
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"In 1652 he is referred to as Major Jolley, alias James Jolley, of Manchester. It is not to be wondered at that with all these dignities thrust upon him, the retired clothier should aspire to a coat of
arms, and having explained to the Norroy King of Arms that he was descended from the Jollys of
Staffordshire, only he could not prove it, he was allowed to bear the arms anciently borne by that family, with a slight difference … The grant is dated 3 October 1648. He also entered a pedigree of four generations, but like many similar productions, it is a mere outline, the only date given being that James Jolley (the Provost Marshal) was aged forty-eight in 1648.
Inset: The Jolly Arms, disclaimed in 1667 |
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"After the Restoration James Jolley lived at Chester, but his zeal had not diminished, for on the 3 July, 1665, 'a conventicle' consisting of a hundred persons was discovered assembled at Chester in the house of Dr Thomas Harrison, late chaplain to Harry Cornwall. The house was broken open, many of the people escaped, but thirty or forty were found hidden in closets and under the beds; these were arrested and brought before the mayor - one of them was Major Jolley. They were all fined, and most of them paid the money to escape imprisonment. On the 4 September following security was taken for the peaceable demeanour of Major Jolley and others at Chester. These prisoners were described as not 'anabaptists, but the first and worst stamp of sectaries'. Major Jolley died 7 November 1666, and was buried at St Michael's Church, Chester. He left a will which was neither dated nor witnessed, in which is described as of 'the city and county of Chester, gentleman'" (pp. iii - vi). He left a widow, four sons and one daughter - with his "silver" seal going to Thomas, presumably the eldest".
Clay (1895) reproduces the grant of arms to Major Jolley in full. This
consists of a statement by Randle Holme, Alderman Deputy to the Office of Arms for the City of Chester, dated 24 October 1648, recording Major James Jolley's many achievements as the basis for a grant of arms which
Holme dispensed with William Ryley, Norroy King of Arms.
| According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Randle Holme (1571-1655) was deputy to the College of Arms for Cheshire, Shropshire and North Wales, a genealogist and heraldic painter. He was Mayor of Chester between 1633-34 and was described by Sir William Brereton (1604-61),
leader of the Roundhead attack on Chester and commander of the Parliamentary forces in Cheshire, as a "friend of trust". He was the first of four generations of Randle Holmes in Chester (see Earwaker 1892).
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| The "disclaiming" of James' descendant Ambrose in Standish in 1667 - recorded by Humphery-Smith (1997) - shows that the heraldic claim made by Major James Jolly was in fact a false one. This is supported by William Hunt, Windsor Herald at the College of Arms, who has found no evidence in College records for a genealogical link between the Staffordshire and Lancashire families. The disclaiming, however, did provide grounds for the re-granting of arms by the College to the Jolly family in 2001. |
For further information, see:
| Clay, JW, ed. | Familiae Minorum Gentium, Vol III, pp. 1048 ff., Publications of the Harleian Society, Vol XXXIX (London 1895) | |
| Earwaker, JP | "The Four Randle Holmes of Chester, Antiquaries, Heralds and Genealogists, c. 1571-1707", Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, 4: 113-70, 1892 | |
| Fishwick, H, ed. | The Note Book of the Rev Thomas Jolly, 1671-93, and an Account of the Jolly Family of Standish, Eaton and Altham (Chetham Society, Vol XXXIII, 1894) | |
| Humphery- Smith, CR | Armigerous Ancestors (Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies: Canterbury 1997) |
