BONYTHON

Henry Pomeroy of Tregony married on 15 April 1600 to Elizabeth Bonython who wasdau of John  Bonython of Bonython  by his wife Eleanor, dau & co-heir of Wm. Mylyton; 
Her sister Eleanor Bonython married on 9th Nov 1601 to Richard Leigh son of Anne Pomeroy of Collaton & her husband William Leigh
both marriages recorded in parish registers of  St Columb Major
Visitations Pedigree for Bonython shows
Nicholas Bonython 3rd son of  John Bonython of St Collumb Minor & his wife Margerie  Kerne of Tresillian & nephew to John Bonyhon who married Eleanor Milliton  children given as Reskimer, William , Elizabeth & John
The tangle of intermarriages is between the families of the West Country is deeply complex and near impossible to untangle 

 The Bonythons of Carclew .

Richard Bonython of Bonython  was baptised , 3 April, 1580, at the estate of his mother in St. Columb Major, the second son of John Bonython of Bonython. by his wife Eleanor Milliton. He may be the Richard Bonython who was Comptroller of the Stannaries of Cornwall and Devonshire, 1603 and 1604 & keeper of the Gaol at Lostwithiel in 1603    [Calender of State Papers, Domestic].

This Richard   is thought to have served as a military officer in the "French Wars"  and was afterwards known as Captain Bonython. He may have served under Sir Ferdinando Gorges, later considered the ‘ Father of  New England Colonisation ‘  and with whom Bonython had dealings. 
Richard as second son was not in line of succession for senior Bonython estate and honours. Those went  his older brother Reskymar whose son and grandson inherited the property, and this may account for Richard's move to the New England colony .
Having served as a soldier in France he came home and became a magistrate  and between 1630 or 1631 he migrated to the fledgling English settlement  in the Province of Maine in New England which had been established under patent by Gorges in North America.

His partner in this enterprise was Thomas Lewis who accompanied him to New England ,where they planned to create  plantation , according to a patent  dated 12 February, 1629-30. Owing to his previous military service Bonython was held in high regard and  was appointed a magistrate of Saco . The first court in Maine was held in Bonython's house on 25 March 1636  under the authority of deputy governor William Gorges 

Bonython was married to Lucretia Leigh daughter of William Leigh & Eleanor Prust  and had a number of children.
Lucretia Leigh  born on 4 August 1584, in St Stephens by Launceston, Cornwall, England, her father, William Leigh, age 21 and his wife  Phillipa Prest Prust, age 17. Married 3 April 1580, in St Columb Major, Cornwall,  tey were the parents of at least 2 sons and 5 daughters. She died on 6 April 1646, in Scarborough, Cumberland, Maine, United States, at the age of 61.

 their children  were
Grace (baptised 1610 at St Breage's Church, Breage), Elizabeth;  Susannah (baptised February 1614).

 Another source lists his children as John, Thomas, Gabriel, Thomas, Winifred & Eleanor.

The truth may be that these may all have been his children - certainly John;  Elizabeth & Eleanor can be accounted for.

 
Richard Bonython seems to have been a man of  honour & ability, a man who kept the respect and confidence of his fellow citizens for so many years. 

There are no court records  impugning his moral, social or political character, and to this is added the positive evidence that as a judge he did not even spare his own son from the utmost rigours of the law.

His son was quite a different kind of man.
  John Bonython    lived a life of debauchery and outlawry during twenty years of his existence. The first court held at his father's house in 1636, brings him to view as the father of an illegitimate child, and his excesses developed to such a degree in 1645, that " threatening to kill and slay any person that should lay hands on him," the court, at which his father again sat, adjudged him '■ outlawed and incapable of any of his Majesty's laws, and proclaim[ed] him a Rebell." [York Court Records.]

After Massachusetts assumed control of the government of Maine in 1652, John refused to submit to her government, and so far carried his guerrilla warfare that the General Court proclaimed him an outlaw and offered a price upon his head to the person who would bring him to Boston alive or dead.

 This seemed to have the desired effect, and submitting to their authority in 1658, he behaved himself for a few years until the Restoration in 1660, when the Gorges party once more came to the front in Maine. Then once more defied his late political masters by penning an insulting letter to the Massachusetts magistrates.

In 1668 the tables were again turned, and although John Bonython remained recalcitrant, he found, after three more years of ineffectual opposition, that submission was the wisest course, and he wrote the magistrates a letter asking them to pardon his past offences, alleging that he " was blinded by a letter from Mr. Gorge." [Mass. Arch, xlviii. 108.] His offences were not always of a political nature, for he quarrelled with his brother in law, Richard Foxwell, in 1654, and tore down his house, for which he had to pay roundly when the court reviewed the case. In 1640he was sued for libel by Rev. Richard Gibson (who had married Mary Lewis, the daughter of his father's partner), in that he had called him " a base priest, a base knave and a base fellow," besides slandering his wife.   He was probably the instigator of the charges against Gibson's wife, recounted in the letter to Winthrop, 14 Jan. 1678-9, and we may suppose that jealousy \was the cause of the trouble, [o Mass. Hist. Coll. i. 267.]

 His is a record unusually crowded with the events of a disreputable career, and  certain not the complete  story.   

The fate of the Bonython family in America bears a striking resemblance to the tragic end of the elder line in England, for the line of Richard the emigrant tapers off miserably in the profligate "Sagamore of Saco," for we hear nothing of his son's descendants. 

On 17 February, 1676, "in his last sickness," John Bonython  made his will, from which we learn the names of his wife and children
but it is  his epitaph which sums up his life  :

" Here lies Bonython the Sagamore of Saco

He lived a rogue and died a knave and went to Hobbowocko."

 His estate was not administered until 1732, when the property was found to consist of 5000 acres of land valued at 18 shillings per acre, which was divided among his heirs