Marowe’s family may have taken its name from the parish of Merrow, near Guildford in Surrey, although there is no evidence to show that his recent ancestors were living there in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries. However it is possible that he was related to a number of individuals who were active in and around London at that time, of whom the most prominent was Walter Merwe, who served as master of the Mint to both Richard II and Henry IV.
Instead of following his putative father into the metal-working trade, Marowe was able to secure his financial and political prospects by becoming a member of the Grocers’ Company. It is not known whether or not he served an apprenticeship or whether he obtained the freedom of the city by redemption, but it is clear that he had been admitted to the franchise by 1432, when his quarterly dues to the Company were said to be in arrears. Marowe rose gradually through the ranks of the grocers, and in 1442 was chosen one of the wardens of the craft. He later went on to serve on three separate occasions as ‘governor’ over the two wardens, a position reserved for members of the Company who had reached aldermanic rank. In other ways, too, he played his part in the life of the Company. In 1447 he and Richard Lee* were chosen to arbitrate in a dispute between two former wardens, while in 1452 they both contributed to a levy raised as part of efforts to protect the Company’s jurisdiction over the city’s beam, where goods sold within the city walls were checked and weighed.
Marowe himself appears to have been heavily involved in the distributive side of the grocery trade in London. His activities can largely be inferred from his frequent appearance as a recipient of ‘gifts’ of goods and chattels, a device which was increasingly employed by those wishing to purchase goods on credit and who were required to provide some form of security. The social and geographical distribution of the gifts made to Marowe and his associates indicates that his business dealings, unlike those of Thomas Catworth* and certain other grocers, were almost exclusively with fellow Londoners. On the other hand, those who made the gifts came from a wide range of trades: there were several fishmongers as well as a net-maker, a ferrour and a brewer, besides members of his own craft. Yet it is unclear whether these were the final customers or mere middlemen who sold the goods on to traders from outside London, with whom Marowe does not appear to have had many recorded dealings.
Marowe’s trading activities enabled him to prosper, despite the difficulties which a contracting money supply posed for a number of his fellow grocers in the middle decades of the century. It is clear that by the 1460s he and associates such as John Walden*, John Young I* and Richard Lee found themselves at the apex of an increasingly steep pyramid of wealth within their Company, a status which gave them political as well as financial clout.
Over the course of his life Marowe used his growing wealth to purchase property in London and neighbouring counties, acquisitions which he passed on to his sons, and enabled him to leave provision for the marriages of his daughters (one of whom, Katherine, was eventually to marry Robert, the son and heir of the Worcestershire esquire Thomas Throckmorton*). In London he extended his interests into at least five parishes, to add to what may well have been his inheritance in that of St. Botolph Bishopsgate. His holdings in the latter included at least three messuages as well as other tenements which were still in the family’s possession in 1539.
Outside the capital, Marowe acquired a country residence at Poplar in the parish of Stepney, which included besides his capital messuage, tenements and a wharf at nearby Limehouse. In 1455 he and William Chedworth, a clerk of the London city chamber, took advantage of serious flooding in the area to buy two of the submerged holdings from the abbey of St. Mary Graces. Further properties in the vicinity, including a third part of the manor of Rumbolds or Cobhams, were to come to the family with his son William’s marriage to one of Chedworth’s daughters.
Marowe’s career within the city government began with his election as one of the four auditors of the city in the autumn of 1444. He held the post for two years, but clearly harboured higher ambitions, for shortly after the end of his first term, on 11 Oct. 1445, he made what was undoubtedly a rather optimistic bid for the vacant aldermanry of Billingsgate Ward. In the light of his limited administrative experience, his rejection should have come as no surprise, but despite this he chose to put himself forward only eight days later for the ward of Aldgate, a move which proved no more successful. The same outcome awaited a third attempt in April 1446, although on this occasion his bid to become the alderman for Farringdon Within at least secured the vote of his business associate John Hatherley.
Following the dissolution, Marowe continued to consolidate his position within the city’s government. In September 1451 he was once more chosen as an auditor, albeit on this occasion as one of the two aldermen who held the position. He continued to serve on committees during the early 1450s and his close involvement with the day-to-day running of London’s government was reflected in his appointment in May 1454 as one of those who were to supervise the keeping of the city’s records. The following month he was chosen as a collector for a loan to the King.
The remainder of Marowe’s mayoralty passed without incident, and he soon found himself cast in the role of respected elder statesman in the city’s administration. He continued to be a valued member of numerous committees, and was also chosen for more high profile assignments. In March 1457 he was appointed to an ad hoc committee of citizens which was sent to see the King, while almost exactly a year later he was chosen as a representative before the King’s council. The Crown continued to avail itself of his services, shortly afterwards, in July 1458, including him in a commission appointed to investigate disturbances between the earl of Warwick’s men and merchants of Lübeck.
The months after the Parliament at Coventry proved tumultuous. The duke of York had sought refuge in Ireland, while his heir, the earl of March, accompanied the Neville earls of Warwick and Salisbury to the stronghold of Calais. Early in the summer of 1460 the exiled Yorkist lords invaded England and marched on London. Still the Londoners were hedging their bets, and dispatched a deputation to the earls, with Marowe in its ranks, to explain the city’s unwillingness to grant them admission. The citizens’ reticence was understandable at a time when the political situation was in the balance, and many of them wished to avoid being associated for the time being with the opposition to the court. In the event, however, the views of 12 of the aldermen prevailed, and on 2 July not only were the Yorkist leaders allowed into the city, but they were made a loan of £1,000 and provided with horses and carts for their army. The defeat of the Lancastrian forces at Northampton later that month gave the Yorkists control of the King, and in his name they summoned a Parliament to meet at Westminster in early October. Once again, Marowe, by now probably regarded as a safe pair of hands, was elected for London.
Earlier in that year Marowe had once again been returned to Parliament, being elected both to the abortive assembly summoned to meet at York in February and the one that eventually assembled at Westminster two months later. He may have died during the final session of the Parliament, which sat between 21 Jan. and 28 Mar. 1465, for probate for his will and testament, which he had drawn up on 8 Oct. the previous year, was granted not long afterwards, on 15 May. Marowe asked for burial in St. Botolph’s Bishopsgate between the high altar and the altar of the ‘chapell by me there late construct and edified’. His testament was notable for its substantial bequests which, in terms of cash alone, amounted to more than £3,000: £400 was left to each of his three sons, 500 marks to each of his three daughters, and £1,000 to his widow Katherine. A substantial quantity of plate was also to be divided between them and his sister, Agnes. As well as the usual charitable donations to hospitals, prisons and leper houses, Marowe made numerous gifts of money to individuals, including his brothers in Bristol and Dunstable, friends in London and elsewhere, and his apprentices and servants in his households in Stepney and London. The Grocers’ Company was left the sum of £215 which was to be used to fund Marowe’s chantry in St. Botolph’s, a bequest which increased the Company’s corporate funds by more than 60 per cent. He also remembered the poor of Stepney and the parish church there. Marowe left the bulk of his estates in Middlesex and London to Katherine, who was also to have a life interest in his house in Billingsgate, and after her death the holdings in Poplar, Limehouse and Billingsgate were to be divided between his sons, William, Thomas and John, with further remainder to his daughters. William alone was left the reversion of his ‘grete place’ in Petywales following Katherine’s death, and was to take possession of tenements in St. Giles Cripplegate, St. Clements Lane and Bishopsgate. Two tenements in Purse Lane in St. Dunstan in the East were to be held for life by Marowe’s sister Agnes. As his executors, Marowe appointed Thomas Urswyk (who sat with him in the Parliament of 1463-5), William Essex and John Styward, a London chandler and another longstanding feoffee of Marowe’s property in the city.