WROTH, Sir Peter (1586-1644), of Blenden Hall, Bexley, Kent

The various branches of the Wroths (originally de Wrotham) traced their ancestry back to twelfth-century Kent. Over time they had acquired estates in other counties, including Somerset and Essex, and the senior branch of the family had for centuries been based at Durants in Enfield, Middlesex. One ancestor, John Wroth†, had been lord mayor of London in 1360-1 and had represented the City in three of the Parliaments of Edward III.13Vis. Essex 1552, 1558, 1570, 1612 and 1634 (Harl. Soc. xiii-xiv), i. 330; W.C. Waller, ‘An extinct co. fam.: Wroth of Loughton Hall’, Trans. Essex. Arch. Soc. n.s. viii. 144-81, 345-52. This MP’s great-grandfather, Robert Wroth†, sat for Middlesex in 1529. His father, Thomas Wroth, third son of Sir Robert Wroth, had successfully pursued a career as a London barrister.14Vis. Kent 1619-21, 214; Vis. London 1633, 1634 and 1635, ii. 374; Vis. Kent 1663-8, 185; Masters of the Bench of the Hon. Soc. of the I. Temple (1883), 16. His wealth had then allowed him to re-establish their ties with Kent through the purchase of Blenden Hall at Bexley.

Peter Wroth, his eldest son, was described by a later historian as ‘a gentleman of great learning’.15Collinson, Som. iii. 69. All that is known about his education is that he accompanied his elder brother, Thomas*, who had already spent time at Oxford, to their father’s inn of court, the Inner Temple, in 1607.16I. Temple database; CITR ii. 28. How exactly their father divided his property between his two sons on his death in 1610 is not clear. The only certainty is that it was Peter, the younger son, who later owned the lands at Bexley and the family’s house in Coleman Street in London.17PROB11/193/331. In 1619 he was knighted by James I.18Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 171. His marriage to one of the Derings of Pluckley in 1625 would have reinforced his local standing within Kent.19Philipott, ‘Vis. of the co. of Kent’, 332. However, he does not seem to have held local office before the late 1630s.

Wroth was elected to the Long Parliament in October 1640 very much as a substitute for his elder brother. In 1634 Sir Peter had helped Sir Thomas acquire lands at North Petherton in Somerset from another branch of the family and he may nominally have remained their joint owner. However it was Sir Thomas who lived there and who, as a result, enjoyed a powerful electoral interest at Bridgwater. But in 1640 Sir Thomas was unable to stand for that seat as he was already serving as the sheriff of Somerset. Getting Sir Peter elected instead was the best way open to him of asserting the Wroth interest in that constituency.

Wroth was not an especially active Member of the Long Parliament during its first year. He was named to just three committees, including that to prepare orders for the auditing of the money collected with the intention of disbanding the armies (16 July 1641).20CJ ii. 129b, 214a; Procs. LP iv. 120. He took the Protestation on 3 May 1641.21CJ ii. 133a; Procs. LP iv. 171. He was also given permission on 23 July to appear before the House of Lords as a witness, although it is uncertain to which particular case(s) this related.22CJ ii. 221a; Procs. LP vi. 62. The third of his committee appointments was to the Recess Committee, created on 9 September to remain in session during the king’s absence in Scotland.23CJ ii. 288b.

During the early weeks of the recess, Wroth travelled to Somerset.24CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 132. On his return, he wrote two letters to Secretary of State Sir Henry Vane I*, who had accompanied the king on his northern journey. Wroth seems to have decided to write to Vane after having first spoken to one of the clerks of the privy council, Edward Nicholas†. His first letter, written on 5 October, was anonymous; he would have been aware just how sensitive its contents might be. His main purpose was to suggest that trying to deal with the Scots was more trouble than it was worth. There was also a hint that Vane should think about resigning from the secretaryship. One recent event Wroth viewed as being particularly significant. On 28 September Richard Gurney had defeated Thomas Soame* in the election to become lord mayor of London. Wroth saw this as a setback for those ‘disliked honest men’ who had been ‘branded’ with the nickname of ‘the puritans’. His second letter, written a week later, again expressed the hope that Vane would be able to return to London in time for the end of the recess, although Wroth accepted that this would be unlikely.25CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 132-3, 135-6. A copy of one of these letters may then have been passed on to Thomas Webb*. If so, it subsequently came to the attention of the Commons, which on 4 November ordered Webb to attempt to identify the anonymous author.26CJ ii. 305b. However, that was the end of the matter. In the months following the resumption of Parliament’s sitting, Wroth’s only appointment was to the committee to establish what Ship Money payments remained in the hands of the various sheriffs (27 Dec.).27CJ ii. 357b. That his brother had been sheriff in 1640 easily explains his interest in that subject. Sir Thomas also prompted Wroth’s other known contribution to parliamentary proceedings during these months, for on 25 February 1642 Sir Peter arranged for Sir Thomas to present the Somerset petition against episcopacy.28PJ i. 465, 466-7.

When the country moved towards civil war, Wroth sided with Parliament. His godly views never made him one of Charles I’s natural supporters and his letters to Vane imply that he had come to believe that the king would not listen to honest advice. On 10 June 1642 he was among MPs who each offered to provide a horse for the forces being raised by Parliament, although he later asked to give £50 instead.29PJ iii. 474; CJ ii. 783b. In August 1642 he was appointed by Parliament as one of the Kent deputy lieutenants and he was included on the committee to arrange for arms to be sent to Kent.30CJ ii. 724a, 737b. Later that year, he was named to committee on the clerkship of the peace for that county and, when the king was advancing on the capital in the days following Edgehill, to the committee to organise the London defences.31CJ ii. 787b, 825b. On 31 December he offered Parliament a loan of an unspecified sum.32Add. 18777, f. 109v. The efforts by Parliament to retain its control over Kent often involved him. In August 1643 he was among MPs appointed to seize the arms and horses of royalist rebels within the county and this was probably why he was also included on the committee to compound with prisoners.33CJ iii. 195a, 203b. In February 1644 he was part of the delegation sent by the Commons on behalf of the Kent deputy lieutenants to ask Sir William Waller* for details of the troops being levied there.34CJ iii. 404a. His other activities on behalf of the Commons also had strong Kentish connections. In July 1643 the Commons sent Wroth and Sir Robert Harley* to enquire of the MP for Maidstone, Sir Francis Barnham, what he intended to contribute to the war effort.35CJ iii. 162a. That Wroth was one of the MPs sent in February 1643 to persuade Sir Edward Dering*, his brother-in-law, to take the National Covenant.36CJ iii. 390a. The case of another relative of suspect loyalties took up some of his time later that year. When his sister, Elizabeth, Lady Clere, was fined £100 by the Committee for Advance of Money, Wroth stepped in to pay half that sum, thereby getting other half rescinded.37CAM 288. During early 1644 he took a particular interest in attempts to draft legislation for supply of timber for the navy and it was agreed that he would be one of the commissioners named in that bill.38CJ iii. 399b, 430b, 457a. This may reflect the proximity of Bexley to the royal dockyards at Deptford.

His appointment to the latest committee on the timber bill is one indication that he was present in the Commons on 11 April 1644.39CJ iii. 457a. A week later he was dead.40C142/745/57. He had left instructions that if he were to die in Kent he was to be buried at Bexley and it was there that his funeral took place on 12 May 1644.41PROB11/193/331; Bexley par. reg. The financial provision he made for his family was predicated on the assumption that his brother Sir Thomas would leave his lands to Sir Peter’s eldest sons, John*, Anthony and Peter. Those three sons were therefore required to surrender their claims to the lands at Bexley, which were to pass first to his widow, Lady Margaret, as her jointure and then to the youngest son, Henry. The house in Coleman Street and lands at Romney Marsh were to be used to raise the portions for his surviving daughters. The lengthy religious preamble to his will was a ringing assertion of Calvinist orthodoxy; he was confident that he would be saved

neither by the help of angels nor archangels, nor mediation of saints, either in heaven or in earth, nor yet by any good works that I have done, or shall do, but only by the death of Jesus Christ, trusting and hoping that my most wicked and evil deeds, which deserved hellfire, to be wasted away by his blessed blood-shedding.42PROB11/193/331.

Two months after Sir Peter’s death, a posthumous daughter, Anne, was born to his widow.43Bexley par. reg.