TAYLOR, Richard (by 1517-73 or later), of Haverfordwest, Pemb.

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

Constituency

Dates

Oct. 1553

Family and Education

b. by 1517, s. of Philip Taylor of Haverfordwest. m. by 1551, Elizabeth.1

Offices Held

Mayor, Haverfordwest 1538-9, 1546-7, member, town council by 1539-46 or later; commr. relief 1550, goods of churches and fraternities 1553; j.p. 1555-64 or later, q. 1573/74.2

Biography

Richard Taylor was a merchant living in St. Martin’s parish, Haverfordwest, where his goods were assessed at £40 in 1545. The few glimpses of his progress derive from lawsuits. The first of these arose out of his being accosted, when he was mayor in 1539, by the servants of John Wogan as he was on his way to St. Bartholomew’s fair. Two cases heard at the Pembrokeshire great sessions in September 1551 concerned his property: in the first he alleged dispossession of a freehold tenement in Haverfordwest, in the second he charged a husbandman with cutting his grass and killing his sheep, crimes for which the defendant was executed. Another disputed title to a messuage in Haverford-west brought Taylor into Chancery while Gardiner held the great seal; he had earlier been in that court with Richard Howell and two other Haverfordwest merchants, following a deal between them and a Breton merchant for the supply of bell metal from the dissolved religious houses of Haverfordwest and St. Dogmael’s.3

Taylor was only once elected to Parliament, and then, according to the defeated candidate Hugh Carne of Haverfordwest, because the sheriff, Lewis Eynon, returned him illegally. Carne appeared in person before the barons of the Exchequer on 13 Oct. 1553, the eighth day of the session, but to what effect is not known since the record ends with Carne’s seeking process against the sheriff. If, as is likely, Taylor retained his seat he acquiesced in the measures passed in this Parliament towards the restoration of Catholicism.4

Taylor continues to appear on the Haverfordwest commission of the peace until 1573/74 but no trace has been found of him thereafter.

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: P. S. Edwards

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. C1/1386/1; NLW ms Wales 25/9, m. 2.
  • 2. NLW Haverfordwest recs. 2139, ff. 2-5; Cal. Haverfordwest Recs. (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. xxiv), 19-21; C219/19/60; CPR, 1553, pp. 364, 419; 1563-4, p. 31.
  • 3. E179/223/438; NLW Haverfordwest recs. 2139, f. 2; ms Wales 25/9, mm. 2, 10; C1/1214/1-2.
  • 4. E159/333, Mich. 88.