STRANGMAN, John (by 1492-1527).

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

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1492, 1st s. of John Strangman of Hadleigh, Essex by Cecily, da. and h. of one Sandford of Rayleigh, Essex. m. by 1519, Mary, da. and event. h. of Robert Ingowe of Barking, Essex, 2s.2

Offices Held

?Commr. subsidy, Essex 1523, 1524; escheator, Essex and Herts. Nov. 1524-Feb. 1526.3

Biography

The Strangmans were copyholders in Essex in the reign of Edward IV and probably owed their rise in status to the profitable marriages of John Strangman and his eldest son and namesake. It was the younger Strangman who was returned for Maldon to the third Parliament of Henry VIII, for at his subsequent admission to the freedom of the borough he was described as childless. That this formality was needed shows that he was being elected for the first time, but no explanation has been found why the town failed in his case—his fellow-Member’s name is lost—to comply with the King’s request for the re-election of the previous Members, unless one of them had been Thomas Hintlesham, who may have been dead or incapacitated by 1514. There seems to have been a connexion between the Strangmans and Sir Richard Fitzlewis, a kinsman of the 13th Earl of Oxford who had been returned for Maldon to at least two earlier Parliaments, for the elder John Strangman was to mention his goddaughter Joan Fitzlewis in his will, but the son’s most likely patron was the courtier and soldier Sir John Raynsford, constable of Hadleigh castle, who was also connected with the earls of Oxford. John Strangman junior was involved with Raynsford in land transactions between 1517 and 1520 and it was probably he who in November 1513 had received payment on behalf of Raynsford after the French campaign and who was described as Raynsford’s servant in a Star Chamber case of 1519 or 1520: he was also named an executor of Raynsford’s will.4

He is probably also to be identified with the John Strangman specially admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in February 1516 but if so his subsequent career there has evidently been confused with that of the Thomas Strangman (perhaps his younger brother) admitted in 1520: Strangman’s nephew Edward Bury, who sat for Maldon in 1542, followed them there in 1528. In 1524 Strangman and his wife Mary purchased the manor of Westhall with houses and 620 acres in Canewdon and Great Stambridge, Essex, and three years later it was probably he who acted as a feoffee for Thomas Audley, the future lord chancellor. Audley was another of Raynsford’s executors and in his own will of April 1544 he left to Raynsford’s son (the Member for Colchester in the Parliament of 1529) the money owed him by Edward and Thomas Strangman, the executors (and presumably the younger brothers) of John Strangman, for the goods and chattels of the elder Raynsford.5

Strangman’s own will has not been found. He died in December 1527 and his inquisition post mortem shows that he held lands in Rayleigh, Rochford and elsewhere in Essex, mostly in right of his wife who had predeceased him. Strangman himself predeceased his father who by his will of 28 Apr. 1528 set aside certain lands for the performance of the son’s will in accordance with an agreement made earlier. Strangman’s heir William, a boy of eight in 1527, married a niece of Audley’s first wife Christina Barnardiston.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: D. F. Coros

Notes

  • 1. Essex RO, D/B3/1/2, f. 78.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from probable first reference. Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiii), 73, 103-5; Essex RO, D/AER4, ff. 53v-56; E150/311/6; Morant, Essex, i. 280.
  • 3. LP Hen. VIII, iii, iv.
  • 4. Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. xii. 299-302; LP Hen. VIII, i, iii; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. ed. Reaney and Fitch, 138; St.Ch.2/4/86-89; PCC 21 Maynwaring.
  • 5. Black Bk. L. Inn, i. 178; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 153, 166; PCC 1 Alen; Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. ii. 366.
  • 6. E150/311/6; Essex RO, D/AER4, ff. 53v-56; Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. l), 91-93.