As a member of the Inner Temple James Warnecombe was chosen marshal for Christmas seven times between 1542 and 1559, but he usually defaulted and was fined. His absences were doubtless connected with his discharge of the offices which he accumulated from 1545 and his succession to the headship of the family on his brother’s death in 1552. One of the exceptions occurred in 1554 when Warnecombe’s Membership of the third Marian Parliament kept him in London over Christmas. His election to that Parliament for Ludlow, with the town clerk John Allsop, may have owed something to the Queen’s directive for the return of resident borough Members, for although Warnecombe made his home at Ivington, near Leominster, he was recorder of Ludlow and a familiar figure there. Unlike Allsop, he did not quit this Parliament prematurely without leave, nor during its successor, in which he sat for his neighbouring borough of Leominster, was he to be included among the Members who opposed one of the government’s bills. Made a justice for Herefordshire in 1554, he probably acquiesced in rather than enthused over the restoration of Catholicism, for ten years later he was to be adjudged a ‘favourer’ of the Anglican settlement. Under Elizabeth his career focussed on his native city and shire, for both of which he was returned to Parliament. He died childless and intestate on 21 Feb. 1581.
biography text
Volume
Parliamentarian
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