LATHOM, John, ?of Sandon, nr. Maldon, Essex.

The sixteenth-century pedigrees of this family are confused. But, whatever his origins, the MP was, in all probability, the John Lathom ‘of S[t]andon, Essex’, who entered the Inner Temple in 1557. There is no record of his being called to the bar, but his office as recorder suggests that he was a practising lawyer and explains his return to Parliament for Maldon. He received 20s. for his fee as recorder in 1562-3. Lathom’s successor as recorder was appointed in 1569, but this does not necessarily mean that Lathom was dead by then. No will or inquisition post mortem has been found, the only known administration for one of this name, granted in February 1602, being for a Surrey man unlikely to have been the Maldon Member.1Harl. 1432, f. 42v; Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiii, xiv), 102, 433; Essex RO, DB 3/3/250; PCC admon. act bk. 1602, f. 106.