Family and Education

b. by 1505, yr. s. of John Missenden (d.1504/5) of Healing and Grimsby by 1st w. Margaret (?Anne), da. of Richard Topcliffe of Somerby. educ. G. Inn, adm. 1521.3

Offices Held

Servant of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland; j.p. Lincs. (Kesteven, Lindsey) 1531-d.; various commissions 1531-d.; recorder, Lincoln 14 Dec. 1536-d.; serjeant-at-law by July 1540.4

Biography

The Missenden family is said to have migrated from Buckinghamshire to Lincolnshire early in the 14th century. On completing his legal training, Anthony Missenden entered the service of the Earl of Rutland and it was probably the earl who in 1535 secured him his appointment as feodary and surveyor of the Lincolnshire lands of Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland. Nothing is known of any part Missenden may have played in the Lincolnshire rebellion of the following year save that a fragmentary deposition in the hand of Robert Aske refers to ‘a letter sent to the Duke of Suffolk at Hull touching the delivery of Anthony Missenden’, but after its suppression he succeeded Thomas Moigne as recorder of Lincoln. In November 1536 the common council of the city granted the nomination to Suffolk, the royal commander against the rebels, and he appointed Missenden, probably to oblige Rutland who held the fee-farm of Lincoln and who had himself asked for the nomination on the death of Richard Clerke in 1530: Missenden had been employed to collect the fee-farm in 1534. On 14 Dec. 1536 he was duly elected recorder, sworn to the freedom of the city and made a member of the common council. In 1541 he led the city officials in welcoming Henry VIII and Queen Catherine Howard to Lincoln and later in the same year he was appointed to the special commission of oyer and terminer which tried Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham for their alleged misconduct with the Queen while at Lincoln.5

The recordership also brought Missenden Membership of the Parliaments of 1539 and 1542. After the first of these, the common council voted a levy to meet the expenses of Missenden and his fellow Robert Dighton and added that if anyone refused to pay the Members might ‘sue for their remedy by writ’. The date of Missenden’s death (apparently intestate) has not been found but George St. Poll, who was of counsel to the Duke of Suffolk and whose aunt married Missenden’s brother, succeeded him as recorder on 7 Sept. 1542 and probably also took his place in the Commons. The writ for the by-election was issued on 8 Nov. 1542, between the first and second sessions.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: T. M. Hofmann

Notes

• 1. E159/319, brev. ret. Mich. r. [1-2]; Lincoln min. bk. 1511-42, f. 278.
• 2. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.
• 3. Date of birth estimated from father’s death. Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. li), 698-9.
• 4. LP Hen. VIII, v, viii, xi-xvii; Lincoln min. bk. 1511-42, f. 258v. A. Pulling, The Order of the Coif, p. xxii lists James Missenden as a serjeant-at-law in 1540 but this is evidently an error.
• 5. Lincs. Peds. 698; J. W. F. Hill, Tudor and Stuart Lincoln, 28-29, 47; LP Hen. VIII, viii, xii, xvi; Lincoln min. bk. 1511-42, ff. 255 and v, 258v.
• 6. Lincon min. bk. 1511-42, ff. 277v, 278; HMC 14th Rep. VIII, 38; Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. lii), 844-5.