Family and Education

b. by 1515. m. Eleanor, 3s. 2da.1

Offices Held

Bailiff, Worcester 1536-7, 1538-9; commr. musters 1539.2

Biography

William Robinson was a mercer who also dealt in pewter; he sometimes used the alias Mercer. His assessment on £25 in goods for the subsidy of 1546 made him one of the wealthiest men in his ward. Nothing is known of his parentage although he may well have been related to John Robins, a London mercer whose will of 1512 shows that he held property in Worcester, and perhaps also to George Robinson, another London mercer, who leased lands in Warwickshire from Sir John Dudley, under whose aegis as Duke of Northumberland the Parliament of March 1553 was summoned. Among Robinson’s many namesakes one of the most distinguished was a third London mercer, an alderman who died in 1552.3

As bailiff of Worcester in the late 1530s and during the episcopacy of Latimer, Robinson shared in measures against Catholic disaffection in the area and signed several reports to Cromwell, but no indication has been found that these activities represented his personal sympathies unless his Membership of Edward VI’s second Parliament is to be counted as one: his will, on the other hand, has a conventional Catholic preamble. He and his fellow-Member Edward Brogden were paid for 36 days at the statutory rate of 2s. a day having set out for the Parliament on 27 Feb. and returned on 3 Apr. Robinson was named second in the list of 24 capital citizens when Worcester obtained a confirmation of its charter in April 1555, and in the following month he made a will leaving £10 to each of his children and the residue of his estate to his wife who proved the will in June 1558. The inventory taken of his goods valued them at some £170.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: D. F. Coros

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Worcs. RO, 008.7/BA 3585/17.
• 2. Nash, Worcs. ii. App. cxii; LP Hen. VIII, xiv.
• 3. A. D. Dyer, Worcester in 16th Cent. 86-87, 108; E179/200/166; C1/772/57, Machyn’s Diary (Cam. Soc. xlii), 28, 328.
• 4. LP Hen. VIII, xii-xiv; Worcester Guildhall, chamber order bk. 1540-1601, f. 46; CPR; 1554-5, p. 81; Worcs. RO, 008.7/BA 3585/17.