BLACKER, William (d.c.1641), of Salisbury, Wilts.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

s. of William Blacker of Salisbury by Alice, da. of Thomas Davy of Harnham, near Salisbury. educ. L. Inn 1578, master of the revels 1579, called 1586, steward of the reader’s dinner 1591. m. bef. 1591, Maria, da. of Michael Ernley of Whetham, 2s. 3da. suc. fa. 1588.1

Offices Held

Steward of St. Nicholas’ hospital, Salisbury 1582-96; j.p. Salisbury from 13 Apr. 1599, Wilts. from 4 July 1599.2

Biography

Blacker was a local lawyer appointed a few days before the 1597 election to a commission to investigate a dispute between two of the Old Sarum free tenants. He apparently took advantage of the opportunity to have himself returned for the borough. He had been connected with the district for some time: when his friend William Chamber, MP for Old Sarum in 1555, made his will (3 May 1579) he left his young daughter Judith to Blacker’s care. Blacker owned houses in the Close, Salisbury, the nearby manor of West Harnham (perhaps inherited from his mother), and the manor of Gillingham, near the Wiltshire border of Dorset. In April 1588 when he was accused in Chancery of barring one Roger Cappes from a tenement in Gillingham, he claimed that the tenement had reverted to him as lord of the manor. He played a minor part in county affairs, being employed by the lord lieutenant to conduct troops from Wiltshire to the coast for service in Ireland. In December 1600 he was paid £17 coat and conduct money for transporting 30 men; the following year he received £92 for conducting 125 men from Wiltshire to Barnstaple. He died in the Fleet prison about 1641 and the property descended to Blacker’s grandson, a lunatic, who died in 1658.3

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: R.C.G.

Notes

  • 1. Wilts. Peds. (Harl. Soc. cv, cvi), 21.
  • 2. C. Wordsworth, St. Nicholas, Salisbury (Salisbury 1902), p. 217; Black Bk. L. Inn, i. 415; ii. 23.
  • 3. E134/14 Wilts., 39/40 Eliz. Mich.; C2 Eliz. C6/27; APC, xxxi. 145; xxxii. 371; Wilts. IPMs (Brit. Rec. Soc. Index Lib. xxiii), 353-4; Hoare, Wilts. Cawden, 64.