Robert Strelley
Robert Strelley (by 1518 – 23 January 1554), of Great Bowden, Leicestershire, was an English politician, soldier, and courtier to Mary I of England.[1]
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He was a Member (MP) of the Parliament of England for Leicestershire in October 1553.[3]
Strelley fought with Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk at the siege of Montreuil in 1544, and in Scotland, probably at the battle of Pinkie. He was with Mary I at Kenninghall, where Mary made him a member of her Privy Council,[4] and at Framlingham Castle in July 1553, where she mustered an army of supporters. Robert Wingfield listed him, as a man "whose family was not obscure", in a catalogue of Mary's supporters.[5][6][7]
Robert Strelley served as a Chamberlain of the Exchequer from 1553 until his death the following year.[8] In 1548, he married Frideswide Knight, a descendent of Thomas de la Haye of Spaldington, Yorkshire, but left no children.[9] Edward VI gave the couple property and a fee-farm rent income from the lands of Egglestone Abbey.[10]
Strelley came from an extended family, and was a son either of Sir Nicholas Strelley of Linby or Sir Nicholas Strelley of Strelley.[11] His will mentions a brother, also called Robert Strelley, who was a goldsmith in London, and two more brothers, John Strelley of London and Robert Strelley of Tirlington, a sister Joan Porter, a nephew William Saville, and a niece Elizabeth Stubbs. His property passed initially to his wife, Frideswide Strelley, and then by entail to the various relations named in the will.[12]
References
- John Harwood Hill, History of Market Harborough (Leicester, 1875), p. 5.
- Alexander Samson, Mary and Philip: The marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain (Manchester, 2020), p. 30: George W. Marshall, Genealogist, 4 (London, 1880), p. 193, citation of grant or augmentation of arms to Robert Strelley.
- "STRELLEY, Robert (by 1518-54), of Great Bowden, Leics. - History of Parliament Online". www.historyofparliamentonline.org.
- Dale Hoak, 'Mary I's Privy Council', Revolution reassessed: revisions in the history of Tudor government and administration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 96, 114.
- George W. Marshall, Genealogist, 4 (London, 1880), p. 193, citation of grant or augmentation of arms to Robert Strelley.
- Anna Whitelock, 'Woman, Warrior, Queen?', in Alice Hunt & Anna Whitelock, Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 175.
- Anna Whitelock & Diarmaid MacCulloch, 'Princess Mary's Household and the Succession Crisis, July 1553', The Historical Journal, 50:2 (June 2007), p. 277: Diarmaid MacCulloch, 'Vita Mariae Reginae of Robert Wingfield', Camden Miscellany, XXVIII (London, 1987), pp. 204, 252: Dale Hoak, 'Mary I's Privy Council', Revolution reassessed: revisions in the history of Tudor government and administration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 96.
- David Loades, Mary Tudor (Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 191.
- Sarah Duncan, 'Frideswide Knight Strelley', in Carole Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet, Jo Eldridge Carney, A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen (Routledge, 2017), p. 483.
- Christpher Clarkson, The History of Richmond, in the County of York (Richmond, 1814), p. 209: Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward VI, 1548–1549 (London, 1924), p. 127.
- House of Commons, 1509-1558, p. 398.
- Charles Kerry, 'Notes to the Pedigree of the Strelleys', Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, XIV (January 1892), pp. 85–87