WROTH, William

The prolific Wroth family possessed long and distinguished parliamentary traditions, having provided knights of the shire for Middlesex since the 1330s. Indeed, every one of William Wroth’s ancestors in the direct male line since the days of his great-great-grandfather had been a Member of Parliament.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 908-11. William was born in London on 6 Oct. 1389 and baptized in the parish church of All Hallows, Honey Lane, on the same day. A number of witnesses were invited to attend by the boy’s father and one of the godfathers, the Somerset landowner William Staunton, but a larger group of individuals who later recalled the occasion were present in the church to attend a hearing connected with a dispute between the fishmonger, Sir Robert Turk†, and the prior of St. Mary without Bishopsgate.5 CIPM, xx. 145.

Wroth’s father died on 17 Sept. 1408, when he was still some weeks short of his nineteenth birthday, and custody of the heir and his lands was initially granted to the treasurer of Henry IV’s household, Sir Thomas Brounflete, William Troutbeck, the chamberlain of Chester, and the future treasurer of England, William Kinwolmarsh, before being sold a year and a half later to Troutbeck alone for an annual farm of £40 and a one-off payment of 80 marks for the heir’s marriage.6 CFR, xiii. 129-30, 183-4; CIPM, xx. 143. Wroth may have been taken into Troutbeck’s household, and he would subsequently maintain a long connexion with his former guardian and his family. Perhaps to protect the ward’s interests (or indeed his own investment) Troutbeck was sworn an additional executor of the elder William Wroth’s will, in 1421 he and Wroth were jointly bound to two Essex men in the sum of £60, and in 1439 Wroth was a feoffee of some of Troutbeck’s Cheshire property.7 Cheshire and Chester Archs., Troutbeck and Talbot mss, DDX 178/13; Guildhall Lib. 9171/2, f. 133; CCR, 1419-22, p. 135; DKR, xxxvii. 718; CIPM, xix. 517.

William proved his age in June 1414.8 CIPM, xx. 145; CCR, 1413-19, p. 132, 1419-22, p. 84. The property which then came to his hands included, apart from a mansion called Le Bolehede in London’s Cheapside, the manor of ‘Durants’ in Enfield, the Somerset manor of Newton Wroth (constituting one third of the manor of Newton Plecy) and other property in Somerset, holdings which gave him an annual income in excess of £40, substantially more than the £26 at which his Middlesex property was assessed for tax purposes in 1436.9 CIPM, xix. 517; xx. 144; C139/137/6; Westminster Abbey muns. 309; Feudal Aids, iv. 435; vi. 583; F.W. Weaver, Som. Incumbents, 374, 407; E179/238/90, m. 1d; EHR, xlix. 638. Wroth’s father had apparently expected him to take up the profession of arms, for he had bequeathed to him his armour, ‘as well for war as for peace’, and in July 1415 the young man indeed sailed for France in the retinue of the King’s younger brother, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. He was present at the siege of Harfleur, but illness prevented him from accompanying the King to Agincourt,10 Guildhall Lib. 9171/2, f. 133; E101/44/30(1); 45/13, m. 4d. and he does not seem to have served in France subsequently.11 It was probably one of the MP’s namesakes, rather than he himself, who served in Normandy in the retinue of the treasurer-general of the duchy, John Stanlowe, in 1440: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. 25775/1448; Archives Nationales, Paris, Monuments Historiques, K66/1/19.

On his return to England, Wroth settled down to the life of a country gentleman. He was included among the gentry required in 1434 to take the general oath against maintenance,12 CPR, 1429-36, p. 408. and became a regular attender at the parliamentary elections in the Middlesex shire court, setting his seal to the sheriff’s indenture on no fewer than nine occasions between 1420 and 1449. It is, however, unlikely that this record is indicative of any special interest in parliamentary affairs: of the nine elections at which Wroth was present, seven were held at the Stone Cross in the Strand (a convenient location owing to its proximity to both the Westminster law courts and the markets of the city of London), while his attendance at courts held respectively at Ossulstone and Brentford is recorded only in 1447 and October 1449.13 C219/12/4; 13/4; 14/1-3; 15/2, 4, 6; 330/24. Perhaps more significantly, he otherwise failed to play much part in public life, never holding office under the Crown beyond the appointments to distribute tax allowances which arose directly from his parliamentary service. In part at least, this may have been a consequence of the need to divide his time between the south-east and Somerset, where by 1429, and probably continuously until 1434, he served as forester of the park of North Petherton (parcel of the earldom of March), most likely by appointment of the last earl’s keeper of the park, the ubiquitous Thomas Chaucer*.14 Collinson, iii. 62, 67; VCH Som. vi. 286. Wroth is thought to have rebuilt the court house on the outskirts of the park. The need to travel regularly across much of southern England nevertheless explains Wroth’s annoyance at the seizure of his horse by the bailiffs of Winchester in July 1424, which he vented in protracted litigation in the King’s courts.15 E13/136, rot. 23; KB27/674, rot. 109d.

Wroth’s relations with his Middlesex neighbours seem to have been cordial. He occasionally witnessed local property transactions or acted as a feoffee, and in about 1438 supported the protest of the landowners and tenants of Enfield and Edmonton against enclosure of the common fields by the treasurer, Ralph, Lord Cromwell.16 London Metropolitan Archs., Enfield Parochial Charities mss, ACC/0903/116, 130; CCR, 1441-7, p. 308; CIPM, xxvi. 368; DL3/21/E1; Edmonton Hundred Hist. Soc. Occ. Pprs. n.s. xxvii. 4. By contrast, he may have been less popular with his own tenants, for in early 1418 he had been reduced to bringing litigation against a group of lower ranking men from Newton Plecy and elsewhere, accusing them of a brutal attack on his servant John Young, said to have taken place in the ‘Hundesfeld’ near Edmonton on 20 Jan. 1416. The outcome of this suit is uncertain, but some 14 years later, in the autumn of 1432, Wroth brought a fresh suit against a different group of Somerset men for a similar attack in the same place, now said to have been executed on 24 Jan. 1430, an offence of which the accused were cleared by a jury.17 KB9/212/1/12; KB27/627, rot. 2d; 686, rex rot. 8; KB29/65, rots. 7d, 16d; 66, rot. 10. Equally, it is not clear what part, if any, Wroth had in the violence which his sons John and William junior unleashed in and around Enfield in the summer of 1445, possibly in connexion with a dispute with Thomas Luyt (a minor lawyer and one-time servant of the Chief Justice, Sir William Cheyne), who had acquired property there. Over a period of several months the younger Wroths and their retainers attacked, abducted and maltreated a number of local men, including apart from Luyt also one Thomas Hoo who had sought surety of the peace against such an attack, and his wife Agnes, whom they were said to have taunted, telling her to ‘go nowe and compleyn ayeyn to the kynge and lete the justice helpe the’.18 KB9/251/64, 86-90, 92, 94, 95; KB27/746, rex rots. 35d, 38; 748, rot. 27; 751, rot. 86; KB29/78, rots. 2, 5d, 18d.

Rather more significant for the family’s fortunes were the connexions with which Wroth’s more important kinsmen of the half-blood, the descendants of his uncle John Wroth† (d.1396) provided him. John had established himself in the south-west and through the marriage of his daughter Agnes to Sir Payn Tiptoft† became the grandfather of Sir John Tiptoft†, later Lord Tiptoft, one time steward of Henry VI’s household; while his grand-daughter Elizabeth married the important Somerset knight Sir William Palton*, a cousin of Lord Botreaux.19 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 620-1, 628, 910; CP, xii(2). 842-6; CIPM, xxii. 12. Yet there is no sign that these prominent figures directly advanced William Wroth’s career.

Wroth died on 1 May 1450, and was buried on the north side of the chancel of the parish church of Bridgwater, the home town of his wife, Averia. She, who held his principal residence of Le Bolehede in jointure, survived him by less than a year.20 CFR, xviii. 133, 177; C139/137/6; Collinson, iii. 67. He was succeeded by his 26-year-old elder son, John, an esquire of Henry VI’s household, who (perhaps through the patronage of his Tiptoft relatives) transferred successfully into the service of Edward IV as master of the King’s harriers, and went on to marry Elizabeth, the daughter of the wealthy Sussex and Middlesex landowner (Sir) Roger Lewknor*.21 CFR, xviii. 201; CPR, 1452-61, p. 280; E101/409/11, f. 38v; 16, f. 34v; 410/1, f. 30v ; 3; 6, f. 40; 9; KB9/271/90; CCR, 1461-8, p. 18. Neither John (who sealed the Middlesex election indentures of 1453, 1460 and 1467), nor his son are known to have sat in the Commons, but the Wroths’ tradition of parliamentary service was renewed – if not continued – by his grandson Robert† and later descendants.22 The Commons 1509-58, iii. 666-8; 1558-1603, iii. 658-65.