WOLRICH, Andrew

The Wolrich family originated in Shrewsbury: Roger Wolrich was twice coroner there in the late fourteenth century. He was responsible for extending the family’s interests beyond the borough through his marriage to a sister of Philip Willey, who, in about 1402, inherited her brother’s modest estate at Presthope in Much Wenlock.1 JUST2/145, m. 3; Salop Archs., Shrewsbury recs., assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 10; VCH Salop, x. 419. In the inq. post mortem taken on the death of Humphrey Wolrich in 1533, the first inq. for the fam. to survive, the manor of Presthope was valued at only 40s. p.a.: C142/56/61. Their son, William, built on these foundations. His wife was, almost certainly, the heiress of the manor of nearby Dudmaston in the parish of Quatt, a couple of miles outside Bridgnorth. On 19 Aug. 1423 the elderly lord of that manor, Hugh Dudmaston, confirmed it to William to hold for the latter’s life at an annual rent of £8, saving the reversion to himself for his lifetime. The manor was then to pass to our MP and his issue with successive remainders to his sister, Elizabeth, in fee tail, and Hugh’s right heirs. Six days later, Hugh undertook, on pain of £40, not to remarry, should his second wife, Joan, die. The obvious conclusion is that the mother of our MP and Elizabeth was Hugh’s daughter and heiress.2 Salop Archs., Dudmaston mss, 2922/3/4, 5. In 1387 Hugh and his wife, Alice, had entailed the manor of Dudmaston, failing male issue, on their four daughters in successive fee tail. Our MP’s mother was presumably the last survivor of these daughters: ibid. 2922/3/3. The match and the expectations attendant upon it help to explain why William enjoyed a career typical of one of the minor gentry, acting as an attestor to three county elections between 1410 and 1422, as a tax collector and as a juror before the county j.p.s.3 C219/10/5; 12/4; 13/1; CFR, xiv. 85, 120, 172; xv. 219; Feudal Aids, iv. 247; Salop Peace Roll ed. Kimball, 52, 76.

Andrew Wolrich may already have been of age when the settlement of Dudmaston was made, but he does not appear again in the records until the summer of 1430 when he confirmed his father’s lease of a tenement in Doglane, Shrewsbury, to a local butcher at an annual rent of 6s. 8d. His father was still alive in the following January, when he gave all his goods to Andrew, but he probably died very soon afterwards.4 Add. Ch. 58778; Dudmaston mss, 2922/3/6. Andrew was, at all events, seised of the manor of Dudmaston later in the same year, for on 2 Oct. he granted it to his father-in-law (a gentleman from some 12 miles north of Bridgnorth) for immediate resettlement on himself and his wife and their issue. The transaction was witnessed by two of the leading townsmen of Bridgnorth, John Bruyn* and Richard Parlour*, and it is not surprising that Wolrich should have taken a part in the town’s affairs, just as his maternal grandfather had done. In 1435 he sat for the borough in Parliament in company with Richard Blyke*, another gentleman with landed interests in its environs. If one may judge by the identity of two of his feoffees at this date, John Burgh III*, one of the leading Shropshire gentry, and Richard Horde*, the most important man in Bridgnorth, he was well connected.5 Dudmaston mss, 2922/2/47, 48; C219/14/5; Salop Archs., deeds 6000/3735. Three years later, in May 1438, he added to his landed interests by farming John Esthope’s manor in Presthope for six marks p.a., although he did so only briefly.6 CP40/728, rot. 330. These early activities and connexions were not, however, to be the basis of an active public career. Aside from attesting the county election on 18 Jan. 1442, he took no traceable part in public affairs, and little else is known of him. For this reason it seems likely that he died while still in middle age, a conclusion consistent with his absence from the records after September 1446, when a deed mentions property in Shrewsbury in his tenure.7 C219/15/2; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. liv. 96.

Wolrich’s descendants went on to enjoy a far greater prominence than their medieval ancestors. According to John Leland, who visited Shropshire in the 1530s, the family then had a handsome annual income of 100 marks. Its most notable later member was (Sir) Thomas Wolrich† (d.1668), MP for Much Wenlock in 1620, who was created a baronet in 1641 and fought for the Crown during the Civil War. The family is commemorated by some fine seventeenth-century tomb chests in the church of Quatt.8 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, iii. 67; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, iv. 107-46.