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SMITH, Christopher (bef.1510-89), of London and Annables, Herts.
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Biography Detail
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Family and Education
b. bef. 1510, yr. s. of Robert Smith of Waltham, Lincs. by Eleanor, da. and coh. of William Lilbourne of Fenby, Lincs. m. c.1540, Margaret, da. of John Hyde of Aldbury, Herts., 2s. 4da.
Offices Held
Clerk of the Exchequer from c.1545, of the pipe from 1551; j.p.q. Herts from c.1564.
Biography
In 1555 Smith bought the manor of Annables, about eight miles from St. Albans, and in 1564 the Queen granted to him and Thomas Broughton the reversion to the ‘prior’s lodging’, with a number of houses belonging to it, in St. Albans itself. He also leased the rectory at Flamstead, where he held the advowson. There would have been no problem in being returned there in 1559, either through his own local influence or through an acquaintance at the Exchequer such as Sir Nicholas Bacon†. He was presumably the Mr. Smith or Smythe to whom was committed the bill for the recognition of the Queen’s title to the Crown (11 Feb. 1559); other committees allocated to Mr. Smith in this Parliament were on the bishop of Winchester’s lands (18 Feb.) and unlawful assemblies (18 Mar.).
Smith died on 12 Apr. 1589. His will, made in duly 1585 and proved in June 1589, refers to leases at South Elkington, Waltham, and elsewhere in Lincolnshire. He also leased land in Nottinghamshire, Surrey and Gloucestershire, and may for some time have had a messuage in the Charterhouse. The executor, Smith’s elder son Thomas, who succeeded him as clerk of the pipe, and may recently have been doing much of the work of the office, received among other bequests an annuity of £20.
Smith had a namesake (allowing for the varying spellings of the surname), also from a Lincolnshire family, who became proctor of the arches, and has been assumed to be the keeper of records in the court of augmentations, and the escheator of Lincolnshire 1549-50.
Cussans, Herts. Dacorum, 355-6; Vis Herts. (Harl. Soc. xxii), 164; VCH Herts. ii. 199, 307-8; CPR, 1547-8, p. 279; 1548-9 pp. 8-9; 1549-51, p. 356; 1560-3, pp. 221, 438, 468, 611; 1563-6, pp. 114-15; LP Hen. VIII, xix(1), p. 499; (2), p. 73; xx(2), p. 449; xxi(2), pp. 431, 432; CJ, i. 54, 55, 58; APC, vii. 48; E101/336/26, f. 175; PCC 60 Leicester, 64 Sainberbe; Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. l), 20.
