KEYLE, Robert (by 1522-?70), of Bagber, Dorset.

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

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1522, s. of Thomas Keyle of London. m. by Feb. 1547, Mary. suc. fa. 10 Sept. 1556.1

Offices Held

Biography

Robert Keyle’s father, a citizen and mercer of London, bought the manor of Bagber with its appurtenances in Corfe Mullen and elsewhere in Dorset, the county of his birth; he held his property in Corfe Mullen of Richard Phelips and Thomas White III. Robert Keyle’s fellow-Member was Phelips’s son Thomas and he may have owed his single appearance in Parliament to this link. Coming from a family whose modest interests lay in the north of the county he had no personal association with the borough, but he was probably well known to Sir Thomas Arundell and Sir John Rogers, who procured their own election as knights of the shire on this occasion.2

In 1547 Keyle rented a number of messuages from his father. He enlarged his inheritance in 1564 by acquiring land and tenements in Blandford Forum and its neighbourhood. Evidently he did a little trading since he exported cloth from Lyme Regis in 1553, but he was primarily a country gentleman and as one of the freeholders of Dorset he helped to elect the knights of the shire for the last Parliament of Mary’s reign. The final glimpse of him is in April 1570 when as Robert Keyle, gentleman, senior, he witnessed a charter of the bailiffs of Weymouth, taking precedence of the other signatories. He probably died later in the same year because during it his property at Bagber passed to the Arnold family.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from age at fa.’s i.p.m., C142/107/11.
  • 2. C1/531/52; 142/107/11.
  • 3. C142/107/11; PRO T/S, ‘Cal. deeds enrolled in CP 1555-1629’, f. 45v; E122/122/7; Weymouth and Melcombe Regis ms M2, f. 6; Hutchins, Dorset, iv. 398.