LEE (LEIGH), John II (by 1526-60 or later), of Isel, Cumb.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Apr. 1554
Nov. 1554

Family and Education

b. by 1526, s. of John Lee I of Isel by Mabel, da. of Hugh Lowther. m. da. of William Harington of Wraysholme, Cartmel, Lancs., at least 1s.2

Offices Held

J.p. Cumb. 1547-54; sheriff 1548-9, 1557-8; steward, Holme Cultram, Cumb. in Feb. 1555.3

Biography

Despite his evident standing in Cumberland little has been discovered about the younger John Lee. Like his father he was a follower of the Dacres; in 1555 the 3rd Lord Dacre wrote to him as steward of Holme Cultram about tenants who were to be grouped in one town for security. Although he may be taken to have been the John Lee who was active in local administration under Mary it is difficult to distinguish him earlier from his father or from other namesakes. He may have fought in Scotland in the 1540s, as did a namesake, probably of Cheshire, who was knighted at Leith in 1544, and either he or his father was distrained for knighthood in 1547, the distraint being still unredeemed a dozen years later. His end is equally obscure, for after being involved in May 1558, a time when he was in London, in a suit over lands at Orton in Cumberland, he has been found only as one of a commission charged in November 1560 with holding an inquisition post mortem in that shire. His son and heir Thomas, who married a widow from Irton, near Ravenglass, died in 1573: this Thomas Lee has been confused with the Thomas Lee of Clattercote, Oxfordshire, who bought Isel rectory in 1559.4

It was a ‘cousin’ Thomas Lee III who as sheriff had returned Lee to both Parliaments of 1554: the kinship could help to account for Lee’s election, although his Dacre connexion was probably decisive. Neither he nor his fellow-Member and probable kinsman Robert Penruddock was among those who withdrew from the second Parliament without leave and were prosecuted for that dereliction.

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Alan Davidson

Notes

  • 1. Huntington Lib. Hastings mss Parl. pprs.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from first commission. Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xl. bet. pp. 48-49; Vis. Cumb. (Harl. Soc. vii), 33-34.
  • 3. CPR, 1547-8, p. 82; 1553-4, p. 18; Holm Cultram (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. rec. ser. vii), 169n.
  • 4. LP Hen. VIII, xvii-xix; H. H. Leonard, ‘Knights and knighthood in Tudor, Eng.’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1970), 55; Req. 2/23/79; CPR. 1558-60, pp. 270, 357; E. Sandford, Antiq. and Fams. in Cumb (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. Tract ser. iv), 14; C142/168/20; M. B. Donald, Eliz. Copper, 286.