SOUTHOUSE, Christopher (d.1591), ?of St. Benet Fink, London.

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

Offices Held

Biography

No man of this name appears in the pedigrees of either the Norfolk or Kent families of Southouse. A Christopher Southouse was at Cambridge in 1552, and completed his education abroad. By August 1555 he was a member of William Whittingham’s congregation at Frankfurt. He did not follow Whittingham to Geneva, but went to Basle, where he entered the university in December 1557. It is not known whether this man was the St. Mawes MP, though it is tempting to guess that, as a former exile, he might have obtained his return through the favour of the 2nd Earl of Bedford.1

A Christopher Southouse, moneylender, and possibly the same man, had a number of transactions with the 3rd Earl of Huntingdon whose manor of Stokenham, Devon, was mortgaged to him in September 1581. Two years later Southouse and one Roger Bromley were buying more lands in Devon from the Earl to satisfy a debt. During 1582 Southouse acted with John Mansfield on behalf of Huntingdon in a quarrel with the 7th Lord Mountjoy over copper and alum mines in Dorset. In May 1584 Huntingdon put one of Lord Lumley’s bonds into Southouse’s hands in order to cancel a debt, only a few months after a demand for the immediate repayment of £800. Southouse also advanced money to other members of the Hastings family. In 1591 the Earl’s brother Walter owed him £525.2

Southouse the moneylender died toward the end of 1591. In his will he asked

all such persons as shall resort unto me in my sickness and shall be present with me at the time of my departure out of this life, to esteem and repute me a good and faithful Christian, notwithstanding any idle or miscreant speeches that may happen to pass from me in mine last end; earnestly requesting them to impute the same unto the infirmity and weakness of the flesh and not unto any want of faith or incredulity in my only Saviour Jesus Christ.

The ‘children of the hospital’ were to sing Psalm 146 as the body was carried to church and the preacher was to take it as his text for the funeral sermon. No wife or children are mentioned, and his property was bequeathed to his brothers, sister, and their children. The overseers were Richard Braithwaite, a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, and Robert Turner of Westminster, perhaps business associates. A nephew, Martin, was mentioned, who may have been the Martin Southouse of Downham, Norfolk, noticed in the 1664 Visitation.3

A Christopher Southouse was a prebendary of Lincoln 1560-79.4

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: Irene Cassidy

Notes

  • 1. Vis. Norf. 1664, (Norf. Rec. Soc. v), 203; Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. liv), 153-4; Al. Cant. i(4), p. 124; C. H. Garrett, Marian Exiles, 290-1.
  • 2. C66/1208, 1233; CSP Dom. Add. 1580-1625, p. 65; Huntington Lib. HA 5366, 5369, 5382.
  • 3. PCC 3 Harrington.
  • 4. C. W. Foster, Lincoln Episcopal Recs. in the time of Bp. Cooper (Lincoln Rec. Soc. ii), 310.