MAROWE, William

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.6 CPR, 1399-1401, pp. 219, 478. Later genealogies asserted that William had been the son of an otherwise obscure Stephen Marowe of Stepney, but no evidence to this effect has come to light and it is probable that the family’s connexion with Stepney owed everything to the MP’s own acquisitions there rather than to those of his ancestors.7 Putnam, 116-17. Indeed, there are good reasons to suppose that Marowe’s origins were relatively humble and that he was in fact the son of a London smith, also named William, whose will was proved in May 1430. This older William had been associated with the parish of St. Botolph Billingsgate, where the MP and two of his sons were later buried, and his will mentioned three children, including a younger William, and an Agnes, the name also born by the later MP’s sister. Although by no means a member of London’s mercantile elite, Marowe’s putative father possessed a number of properties in the city, including an inn known as Le Vyne in Bishopsgate Street, and following the death of his widow this may have provided the young William with the core of what was to become a substantial portfolio in the capital.8 Commissary ct. wills, 9171/3, f. 255v; 9171/4, f. 121v; PCC 9 Godyn; CP40/577, rot. 200. By Nov. 1436 Agnes had married a John Weston, gentleman: Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 209.

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.9 Ms. Archs. Grocers’ Co. i. 221, ii. 249, 272, 291, 294, 325-7, 373; Putnam, 118.

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.10 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 178, 184, 253, 271, 278, 305-6, 244, 377, 439, 459; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-58, p. 176; 1458-82, p. 159. The retail trade was only one part of Marowe’s commercial dealings. Like many of his fellow grocers he was also active in the export trade in English cloth, although his shipments were not especially notable when compared with those being made by many London mercers in this period. Thus, in the seven months from January 1433 he exported just two cloths, while even in 1448-9 his dealings in this commodity were not extensive. It is nevertheless possible that Marowe traded through intermediaries and that two Colchester merchants later said to be indebted to his widow had acted as agents to take his cloth for sale on the continent. By the mid fifteenth century Colchester had built up important links with merchants of Cologne in particular, and it is evident from other sources that London grocers were taking advantage of this route to the continental cloth markets, in exchange for goods such as dyes and alum which they imported.11 E122/73/23; 203/1, f. 14; P. Nightingale, Med. Mercantile Community, 525. This might also have encouraged Marowe to become involved in the property market in Essex. Salt was another commodity in which Marowe occasionally traded. In November 1445 he was found guilty of forestalling, after it was found that he had bought up 160 weys of bay salt before it had come to market in London. The salt was declared forfeit by the civic authorities and confiscated, and Marowe himself came before the mayor and aldermen on 16 Dec. to admit his culpability.12 Jnl. 4, ff. 109v, 110v; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 312. Many of his business ventures were conducted in partnership with other merchants. Thus, in August 1435 he and John Hatherley* were among a group of Londoners who claimed ownership of a cog from Prussia named the George and the merchandise which was on board. Their claim was opposed by the merchants of the Hanse in London who alleged that the vessel had in fact been captured while on its way to Flanders. After an investigation it transpired that the George had indeed been captured, but that it had been rescued by another ship and taken to London whereupon Marowe and his fellows had bought it and fitted it out in readiness for a voyage to Bordeaux, perhaps intending to bring wine back to England. The mayor of London was charged with resolving this dispute, and after the Hansards failed to prove that they still owned the vessel it was delivered back to the Londoners.13 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 284.

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.14 Nightingale, 477. Inevitably, this made them the target for attempts by the Crown to raise badly-needed funds. Thus, in the autumn of 1450, Marowe, Geoffrey Boleyn* and other Londoners advanced the sum of £1, 246 13s. 4d. to the King as a contribution towards the cost of a voyage to Gascony by a force lead by Sir Richard Wydeville.15 Jnl. 5, f. 47v; CPR, 1446-52, p. 472. At other times, the merchants of London were charged with selling goods confiscated from alien traders, paying a proportion of the profits to the Exchequer: in September 1453 Marowe, along with Lee, Nicholas Wyfold*, Stephen Forster* and others received a royal grant of ‘roche alum’ and ‘blak foile’ worth £2,000 in the ports of London and Southampton, with which they were to trade to the Crown’s advantage.16 CPR, 1452-61, p. 155; 1446-52, p. 472; PPC, vi. 152-4; W. Smith, ‘R. Finance and Politics, 1450-5’ (Manchester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1998), 236-8, app. VI.

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 1539.17 Corp. London RO, hr 178/16; 187/13-14. As his mercantile activities developed Marowe began to search for property close to the river from where he could load and unload ships docking at one of the many quays and wharfs. By November 1440 he had acquired from a goldsmith named Thomas Reynham four tenements and a wharf in Petywales in the parish of All Hallows Barking, and some years later he purchased an additional plot of empty land called ‘Le Colehawe’ close by, before transferring his properties there to a group of feoffees which included the recorder of London, Thomas Urswyk II*, by then his kinsman by marriage.18 Ibid. 169/20, 21; 179/30; 185/20. The wharf was initially known as Galley Key, but eventually became more commonly known as ‘Marowes new keye’. This distinguished it from his later, but more substantial, acquisition of a wharf known as ‘Le Culver Key’, subsequently referred to as ‘Marowes Key’. Marowe obtained seisin of ‘that great place ... anciently called Le Culver’ in June 1459, with his father-in-law the mercer Richard Rich, and kinsmen by marriage the Exchequer official William Essex* and the recorder Urswyk acting as his feoffees, but it is probable that he had at least periodically been resident in that part of London since at least 1436, when he had been listed among the jurors assessing the income tax of that year in Billingsgate Ward. By the time of his death Marowe owned yet more holdings in London, of which the most significant were his tenements in the parishes of St. Giles Cripplegate and St. Dustan in the East, as well as inns known as the Le Highhous and Le Glene super le Hoop in Coleman Street.19 Ibid. 187/51; 195/40; 197/8, 51; 199/5, 6; 200/4, 5, 14; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 197.

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.20 VCH Mdx. xi. 38, 44, 47; SC2/191/48. In addition, Marowe invested in property in Essex: ten messuages and a quantity of land at Barking, and 20 messuages and several hundred acres at ‘Harford Stok’, which in 1499 were said to be worth over £10 p.a.21 Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 55, 98, 102, 106; Cal. Wills ct. Husting ed. Sharpe, ii. 606; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 198.

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.22 Jnl. 4, ff. 87, 100-1, 125v Clearly, Marowe neded to make more of a name for himself, and an opportunity presented itself in late 1446, when writs were issued for a Parliament to be held at Cambridge (although subsequently moved to Bury St. Edmunds). Unquestionably, a Parliament held in the backwater of East Anglia presented an inconvenience to many members of London’s mercantile elite who were thus probably only too happy to elect Marowe. The grocer’s spell in the Commons did his civic career no harm, and in May 1448 he was appointed to the first of many civic committees on which he would serve in subsequent years.23 Ibid. ff. 155v, 217; jnl. 5, ff. 25v , 30v-31, 92v, 97, 103v, 111v, 112v, 138, 181, 185v, 204v, 234, 248v. In September the same year his efforts were recognized by his election as one of the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, a post which clearly marked him out as a potential future alderman or mayor. Indeed, it was during his term of office that, on 14 Apr. 1449, he was finally chosen as an alderman. Broad Street was evidently not his ideal choice of ward, and in July 1451 he managed to be removed to Tower Ward in which his properties at Petywales were located.24 Jnl. 5, ff. 9, 61. In the meantime he had been elected to Parliament for a second time; his fellow Members at the assembly which met in October 1450 included another grocer, Richard Lee.

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.25 Ibid. ff. 166v, 171. Marowe was now close to reaching the pinnacle of his civic career. That autumn he was for the first time a candidate for the mayoralty, but lost out to Stephen Forster. It had by this time become increasingly common for the losing candidate to be elected the next year, and on 13 Oct. 1455 Marowe was duly chosen to succeed Forster. The Grocers spent extravagantly on the mayoral procession, paying the very large sum of £56 6s. 8d. for 16 trumpeters.26 Ibid. f. 199v; Nightingale, 502; Guildhall Lib., Grocers’ Co. accts. 11571/1, f. 43v. The celebrations were, however, to be of short duration, for Marowe’s term of office was to be dominated by one of the most dramatic and serious outbreaks of anti-alien violence in the capital since Cade’s revolt. The violence stemmed from an attack upon a Lucchese merchant on 28 Apr. 1456, following which Marowe committed the chief culprit to prison. As he left the Guildhall to go to dinner with the sheriffs, ‘a grete company of yonge men of the mercery as prentysis and other lowes men ... taryed the mayre and the sheryvis styll in Chepe not suffiryng hym to departe till they had theyre ffelaw being in prison as before is said delyverd and so by fforce they delyverd theyr ffelaw oute of prison’.27 Great Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 188. This precipitated the outbreak of rioting directed against the Lombard community, which Marowe and the sheriffs failed to prevent. Indeed, one chronicler went so far as to imply that they had colluded with the mercers in allowing their comrade to be released. Despite these rumours Marowe, as mayor, was appointed to a royal commission of oyer and terminer headed by the duke of Buckingham which was to investigate the disturbances.28 Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 188; J.L. Bolton, ‘London and the Crown’, London Jnl. xii. 12-21. Two years later Marowe was to be appointed to another royal commission, charged with examining the goods and merchandise of Genoese merchants in the capital, but on this occasion the sensitive situation in London led to this order being countermanded: CPR, 1452-61, p. 444.

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.29 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 401; jnl. 6, f. 209. Marowe must have been well aware of the suspicion with which many of the capital’s merchants were by now regarded by the Crown. During 1459 this suspicion led to a concerted attempt to prosecute London merchants for the giving of illegal credit: no fewer than 104 cases were heard that year, a dramatic increase in the previous levels of such prosecutions, and it may well have been against this background that on 7 Feb. Marowe obtained a general pardon. Nevertheless, the city corporation did not wish to place itself in open opposition to the government, and it was with this in mind that in the following October, shortly after the rout of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge, Marowe was chosen to lead a deputation to the King to assure him of the city’s continuing loyalty.30 Nightingale, 510; jnl. 5, f. 256v; jnl. 6, ff. 26v, 62, 91, 92v, 114v, 118v, 182, 184v, 196v, 222v, 226, 244; R.R. Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, i. 296. His successful participation in the earlier inquiry regarding the merchants of Lübeck may well have played its part in his appointment in March 1460 as justice to hear and determine pleas for debt among the German merchants in London, a post he may have continued to hold until his death.31 CPR, 1452-61, p. 566.

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.32 Jnl. 6, f. 238; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 860. The Parliament, in which it was agreed that Henry VI’s son would be disinherited in favour of the duke of York and his descendants, continued to sit in the early weeks of 1461 (following York’s death at Wakefield), before it was hastily dissolved in the first days of February, as Queen Margaret’s army approached from the north. Nothing is known of Marowe’s part in the turbulent events in and around London in the days following the second battle of St. Albans and the accession of Edward IV on 4 Mar., although he continued to serve on civic committees during the first years of the new reign, and in the summer of 1463 along with John Norman* and Hugh Wyche*, advanced the large sum of 1,000 marks to the Crown. This was intended to help fund the campaign against Lancastrian forces in the north of England which by the end of that year culminated in the successful sieges of three Northumbrian castles.33 E403/830, m. 1.

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.34 PCC 9 Godyn; 11 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 85v-86); Nightingale, 538. In the months following his death Urswyk and the other feoffees completed the necessary settlements in the interests of the widow, who in May 1466 entered into a bond before the mayor in the sum of £1,860, representing the money and jewels that were to be delivered to Marowe’s children on the death of his sister. Katherine died at some point before 1481, when one of her executors handed over to the chamberlain of London 600 marks which her late husband had left to his eldest son, William, and an additional 125 marks accruing to his son Thomas by reason of Agnes’s death.35 London hr 195/40; 197/8; 199/5, 6; 200/4, 5; 204/14; Cal. Letter Bk. London, L, 63; Cal. P. and M. London, 1458-82, p. 146. William died in Mar. 1499 leaving the bulk of the Marowe estates to his son, Thomas, who was then a minor. Custody of these was given to the deceased’s brother Thomas, by then an eminent lawyer, who died in 1504, by which time the yr. Thomas had attained his majority: CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 198; Cal. Wills ct. Husting, ii. 606.