Family and Education

Offices Held

Mayor, Newcastle-under-Lyme 1555-6; church-warden, St. Giles, Newcastle-under-Lyme 1566-7.2

Biography

The ties between Newcastle-under-Lyme and the 1st Viscount Hereford, and the election of Hereford’s son William Devereux for Staffordshire and of Hereford’s secretary Francis Smith for Stafford, might suggest that John Smith owed his return to the viscount, but his kinship with the secretary, who was of Essex origin, is doubtful and on the indenture he is described as ‘of Newcastle aforesaid, junior, gentleman’. His father and namesake who had sat for the town in the Parliament of 1542 was still alive, although no longer as active as before, and it was to distinguish between the pair that until his father’s death in 1561 he was called junior; his later description of ‘beyond water’ seems to imply that he dwelt on the far side of the Castle Pool. His Membership preceded that of his elder brother Richard whom during his mayoralty in 1555 he was to return to Parliament. In the autumn of 1552 he had bought the silver formerly used in the Lady chapel of the parish church for £3, but whether he agreed with the spoliation of the churches is not known: under Elizabeth his father was to ask for burial in that chapel and he himself was to be one of the churchwardens. In September 1561 he obtained confirmation of his arms from Garter King of Arms. Six years later he and his brother Thomas both enlarged their houses and in 1581 he succeeded Richard to the family property. He was dead by December 1583 when the heralds visiting Staffordshire allowed his son Ralph the use of a coat of arms different from that of 1561.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. iii(2), 130.
• 2. T. Pape, Newcastle-under-Lyme , 192, 196.
• 3. C219/20/112; Pape, 28, 42, 196, 197; Grantees of Arms (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 233-4.