Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Newmarket, Adam de
NEWMARKET, ADAM de (fl. 1220), justiciar, was son of Robert de Newmarket, and a member of a Yorkshire family. The first English baron of the name is Bernard of Neufmarché or Newmarch [see Bernard, fl. 1093], who settled in Herefordshire soon after the Conquest, and left no recognised male off-spring. An Adam de Newmarket occurs as a benefactor of Nostel priory in the reign of Henry I, and a William de Newmarket under Henry II and Richard I. Their relationship to the justiciar seems obscure.
Adam de Newmarket served with John in Ireland in 1210. As a northern lord he was perhaps an adherent of the baronial party, and in 1213 fell under suspicion, and was imprisoned at Corfe Castle. He had to give his sons, John and Adam, as hostages, but on 18 Oct. 1213 they were released and delivered to their father (Cal. Rot. Pat. p. 105). In 1215 Newmarket was one of the justiciars appointed to hold an assize of Mort d'Ancestor in Yorkshire (Cal. Rot. Claus. i. 203). He was justice itinerant for Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire in 1219–20. A letter from him and his colleagues on the case of William, earl of Albemarle, is printed in Shirley's ‘Royal and Historical Letters’ (i. 20). Newmarket was again justice itinerant for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in 1225; for these counties and for Cambridge, Huntingdon, Essex, and Hertford in 1232; and for Yorkshire and Northumberland in 1234. He was employed in the collection of the fifteenth in Yorkshire in 1226. The date of his death is uncertain, but it was previous to 1247, for in that year his grandson, Adam, son of John de Newmarket, did livery for his lands (Excerpt. e Rot. Finium, ii. 19). The elder Adam de Newmarket had a brother Roger (Cal. Rot. Claus. i. 278).
Adam de Newmarket (fl. 1265), baronial leader, the grandson of the above, must have been born in or before 1226. He was summoned for the Scottish war in 1256, and for the Welsh war in 1257. He sided with the baronial party, and in December 1263 was one of their representatives at Amiens (cf. letters, ap. Rishanger, pp. 121, 122, Camden Soc.) Newmarket was taken prisoner by the king at Northampton on 5 April 1264, and his lands seized. After the battle of Lewes he no doubt regained his freedom and lands, and in June was appointed warden of Lincoln Castle. Newmarket was summoned by the barons to parliament in December 1264. When war broke out again in 1265 he was serving with the younger Simon de Montfort, and was taken prisoner by Edward, the king's son, at Kenilworth, on 2 Aug. He made his peace with the king, under the ‘Dictum de Kenilworth,’ in 1266. Newmarket married a daughter of Roger de Mowbray. Neither his son Henry nor his grandson, Roger de Newmarket, was summoned to parliament. Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, was a descendant.
[Annales Monastici; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 435; Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerage, p. 401; Nicolas's Historic Peerage, ed. Courthope; Foss's Judges of England, ii. 431.]