Family and Education

b. 1528/29, 1st s. of Sir Thomas Stradling of St. Donats by Catherine, da. of Sir Thomas Gamage of Coity; bro. of David. educ. Oxf.; I. Temple, adm. Feb. 1552; travelled. m. settlement 20 Jan. 1567, Agnes, da. of Sir Edward Gage of Firle, Suss., 1s. d.v.p. suc. fa. 27 Jan. 1571. Kntd. Oct. 1573.1

Offices Held

J.p. Glam. 1555, j.p.q. 1573/74-?d.; sheriff 1573-4, 1582-3, 1595-6; commr. piracy 1578, 1586; dep. lt. Pemb. 1590-4, Glam. 1595.2

Biography

Edward Stradling owed his Membership of two Marian Parliaments to his father’s association with the 12th Earl of Arundel, the patron at both the boroughs concerned. That he was not to reappear in the Commons after 1558 is to be explained partly by Stradling’s own and his family’s Catholicism and partly by his love of Wales and his devotion to its culture. Although himself a conformist, during the early years of the new reign his father’s recalcitrance at home and his brother’s abroad kept Stradling under suspicion, and after he shook this off to become sheriff and deputy-lieutenant he was probably disinclined to challenge the Herbert domination of his shire. By then he was immersing himself in the studies of Welsh history and genealogy on which his fame rests and which were to be acknowledged by David Powel in his Historie of Cambria of 1584. No less memorable was his shouldering of the cost of printing Siôn Dafydd Rhys’s Welsh grammar of 1592.3

Stradling’s marriage into the Gage family of Firle helped to prolong the connexion with Sussex begun by his father; prominent among his many friends were Thomas Sackville, Baron Buckhurst, Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu, and a fellow-scholar, John Lord Lumley, whom he was to appoint overseer of his will. The will, dated 10 May 1609, is notable for its reference to his collections of arms and armour, books and manuscripts, and ancient coins. His only child having died in infancy, Stradling adopted as his heir a great-nephew John. He died on 15 May 1609.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: R. J.W. Swales

Notes

• 1. Aged 80 at death, DNB; DWB; Barbican House, Lewes, Gage ms 21/46, 47, 49.
• 2. SP11/5/6, f. 61; APC, x. 331; xiv. 143; xix. 248; xxv. 14.
• 3. SP12/66, f. 59; CSP For. 1577-8, p. 536; Stradling Corresp. ed. Traherne, 30, 31, 233, 234-5; CSP Dom. 1581-90, p. 379; HMC Hatfield, iii. 214; Cath. Rec. Soc. xiii. 93; Wood, Ath. Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 50-51.
• 4. Stradling Corresp. passim; PCC 97 Dorset; G. J. Clark, The Castle of St. Donat’s, Glam. 31.