SHAKERLEY, Robert (by 1510-69 or later), of Little Longstone and Chesterfield, Derbys.

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

Constituency

Dates

Mar. 1553
Oct. 1553

Family and Education

b. by 1510, s. of Robert Shakerley of Little Longstone. m.Elizabeth, da. of John Peto of Chesterton, Warws., 2s. 3da.1

Offices Held

Treasurer, household of Francis, 5th Earl of Shrewsbury.2

Biography

The Shakerley family of Little Longstone was a cadet branch of the Cheshire house, Robert Shakerley’s grandfather having bought the manor shortly after 1474. Of Shakerley himself little trace has been found before his first election for Hedon. It was doubtless a namesake who served as a gunner at Guisnes in 1540 and possibly another who acknowledged the settlement of a debt due to him and Nicholas King in 1549 and who appears with Roger Heigham as a deputy chamberlain of the Exchequer in 1552-3. By contrast, Shakerley’s return to the two Parliaments summoned in 1553 can be confidently ascribed to the patronage of the 5th Earl of Shrewsbury, perhaps reinforced on the second occasion by the Queen’s. Although the first reference found to Shakerley as Shrewsbury’s servant dates from October 1560, when he attended the earl’s funeral as treasurer of the household, the two had been associated since the 1530s and related since at least 1547 through the earl’s marriage to Shakerley’s sister Grace. To the link thus established, or strengthened, with the earl, and through him with Princess Mary, Shakerley may have been able to add another connexion with the princess, who had a Mistress Shakerley in her service. Thus whereas at both elections in 1553 the earl, as president of the council in the north, was instrumental in Shakerley’s nomination, at the second of them, when he had his name inserted on a blank return, it may have been at the prompting of the countess, then acting as her husband’s representative with the Queen.3

Shakerley’s disappearance from the Commons after 1553 remains unexplained; he can hardly have failed to welcome the Catholic restoration, which as a Member of Mary’s first Parliament he had not opposed, and he may simply have yielded place to Shrewsbury’s many other clients. After the 5th Earl’s death he remained a dependant of the new one, with whom he corresponded between April 1562 and February 1563, and at whose orders he was examined in 1565 about an infanticide at Youlgreave Hall, Derbyshire. Although he is not mentioned in his brother Rowland Shakerley’s will of March 1565 he was still living at Chesterfield in 1569 and early in the following year a ‘Mr. Shakerley’ entertained one of the 6th Earl’s servants engaged on a survey in that neighbourhood.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Alan Davidson

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference, 1531. J. C. Cox, Derbys. Churches, ii. 100; The Gen. n.s. viii. 77-78, the two pedigrees given here differ as to whether Shakerley was a son of his father’s first or second marriage.
  • 2. J. Hunter, Hallamshire, ed. Gatty, 78.
  • 3. Cox, ii. 100; LP Hen. VIII, xiii, xvi; CPR, 1548-9, p. 228; Stowe 571, f. 6v; Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary 1536-44, ed. Madden, 21; C219/21/59; HMC Shrewsbury and Talbot, ii. 24, 348; E. Lodge, Illustrations, i. 227; E315/161, f. 212.
  • 4. HMC Shrewsbury and Talbot, i. 16, 17, 148; ii. 91, 538; J. P. Yeatman, Recs. Chesterfield, 135; PCC 10 Morrison; The Gen. n.s. viii. 78.