Family and Education

b. by 1516, s. of John Durrant of Barrowden and Cottesmore. m. Dorothy, 1s. 2da. suc. fa. 26 Nov. 1552.1

Offices Held

Biography

Roland Durrant’s grandfather had acquired a moderate estate in Barrowden, Luffenham and Morcott, and his father, an escheator in Northamptonshire and Rutland, added land in Burley and Cottesmore. Durrant succeeded to these properties in 1552 and in the general pardon which he sued out in 1559 he was described as of Barrowden and late of Rockingham on the Northamptonshire border of Rutland. With Stamford, the borough for which he was elected to the second Marian Parliament, Durrant had no known connexion, and since on this occasion the crown asked for the return of residents he must have had powerful backing there. His most likely patron was Cecil, who since his own return for Stamford in 1547 had had a hand in almost every election there, but as no link between the two has been traced other than Durrant’s tenancy of land held of Barrowden manor, which Cecil had recently acquired, this explanation must remain tentative.2

Durrant was not to sit again nor does he appear to have made any mark locally. In a muster list of 1569 he appears among a number of Rutlandshire gentry who each owned only one long bow. A monumental inscription with coat of arms in Barrowden church records his death in 1588. He was succeeded by his son George who died six years later, when administration of Durrant’s goods was granted to his widow Dorothy.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. K. Dale

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from age at fa.’s i.p.m., E150/710/7. Vis. Rutland (Harl. Soc. iii), 42; PCC admons. act bk. 1594, f. 96v; VCH Rutland, ii. 172; PCC 6 Populwell.
• 2. CPR, 1547-8, p. 373; 1550-3, p. 198; 1558-60, p. 199.
• 3. Lansd. 11(12), f. 39; VCH Rutland, ii. 172, 174; PCC admons. act bk. 1594, f. 96v.