Bevis Bulmer

[8] The circumstances of their trial and execution were recorded by the author of Wriothesley's Chronicle:[9][10][11] Also the 16 day of May [1537] there were arraigned at Westminster afore the King’s Commissioners, the Lord Chancellor that day being the chief, these persons following: Sir Robert Constable, knight; Sir Thomas Percy, knight, and brother to the Earl of Northumberland; Sir John Bulmer, knight, and Ralph Bulmer, his son and heir; Sir Francis Bigod, knight; Margaret Cheney, after Lady Bulmer by untrue matrimony; George Lumley, esquire;[12] Robert Aske, gentleman, that was captain in the insurrection of the Northern men; and one Hamerton, esquire, all which persons were indicted of high treason against the King, and that day condemned by a jury of knights and esquires for the same, whereupon they had sentence to be drawn, hanged and quartered, but Ralph Bulmer, the son of John Bulmer, was reprieved and had no sentence.And on the 25 day of May, being the Friday in Whitsun week, Sir John Bulmer, Sir Stephen Hamerton, knights, were hanged and headed; Nicholas Tempest, esquire; Doctor Cockerell, priest;[13] Abbot quondam of Fountains;[14] and Doctor Pickering, friar,[15] were drawn from the Tower of London to Tyburn, and there hanged, bowelled and quartered, and their heads set on London Bridge and divers gates in London.And the same day Margaret Cheney, "other wife to Bulmer called", was drawn after them from the Tower of London into Smithfield, and there burned according to her judgment, God pardon her soul, being the Friday in Whitsun week; she was a very fair creature, and a beautiful.Bulmer began his mining career at some of the former Bulmer properties at Wilton, North Yorkshire, and is said to have been interested in his youth in the iron smelter set up by Sir John Manners at Rievaulx Abbey, a project to which he returned in 1577 when a new smelter was being set up.

The Mendip ores (calamine and galena) were used by Christopher Schutz[16] from 1565 to 1586 at the smelter newly constructed by the Company of Mineral and Battery Works at Tintern.

[8] According to Baldwin, Bulmer was also "on the fringes" of the smelting operations at Dartford in which Schutz refined tons of worthless ore brought from Baffin Island in 1576–78 by Martin Frobisher.

[8][2] In February 1585 the Admiralty Court commissioned Bulmer and two others to assay the gold bullion on the captured Spanish ship Volante at Bristol.

[1] In 1588 he was granted a patent for a water-powered nail-making machine,[2] and on 4 December 1588 was given licence for twelve years "to make and cut iron into small pieces to work out nails".

Christopher Schutz had died in 1592, and by Act of the Scottish Parliament Bulmer replaced him in 1593 as Master of the Works for Ores from Cathay and the North West Parts.

[23] The Scots granted Bulmer a patent to explore for gold and silver at Leadhills in Lanarkshire,[1] and from 1594 he is said to have had as a partner an Edinburgh goldsmith named Thomas Foulis[24] who was jeweller to King James' wife, Anne.

[23] Atkinson describes in vivid prose how Bulmer made a stamping mill at Long Clough Head in the Crawford Moor area, where he got a great deal of "small mealy gold", much of which he gave away to "unthankful persons", and how at Glengaber Burn[25] in Ettrick Forest he got the "greatest gold", sometimes like "Indian wheat, or pearl, and black-eyed like to beans", but because he "wasted much himself" and "gave liberally to many" in order to be "praised and magnified", and had always "too many irons in the fire", he impoverished himself when he could have become a rich subject.

[31] In 1603 James I and Bulmer devised a plan by which the search for gold in Scotland could be financed by making investors "Knights of the Golden Mines".

With a free gift from the King of £100, together with a further royal grant of £200, Bulmer returned to Scotland to search for gold in the Lowther Hills in March 1605.

[36] King James purchased the property from Hamilton, and appointed Bulmer master and surveyor, with a grant of £2419 16s 10d to finance the project, but within two years had proved a financial disaster.