TYRRELL, Edmund (by 1513-76), of Rawreth and Ramsden Barrington, Essex.

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

Constituency

Dates

Apr. 1554
1558

Family and Education

b. by 1513, s. of Jasper Tyrrell by Anne, da. of one Goodinge or Goring of Suff. m. by 1543, Susan Cooke, 4da. suc. gd.-fa. 28 Sept. 1543.1

Offices Held

Parker, Ramsden Barrington by 1553; bailiff and parker, St. Osyth, Essex Nov. 1553; j.p. Essex 1554-58/59; various commissions from 1554; gent. at arms by Dec. 1558-d.2

Biography

Edmund Tyrrell came of a cadet branch of one of the oldest and most prolific of Essex families. He was assessed for the subsidy of 1545 among the residents of Ramsden Bell House at £20 a year in lands, although two years earlier he had inherited from his grandfather William property worth nearly thrice that figure. In 1536 he took a 21-year lease of the rectory and tithes of Hockley, Essex, from Barking abbey, renewing it in 1553 and 1567. By 1543, and probably somewhat earlier, he had married Susan Cooke; she is said to have been of Gidea Hall and thus a kinswoman, although not apparently a daughter, of Sir Anthony Cooke.3

Tyrrell’s career was bound up with two personal relationships, his service with William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, and his friendship with (Sir) William Petre. It was as a ‘beloved servant’ that between 1539 and 1543 Tyrrell received, with his wife, an annuity of £6 13s.4d. from Parr, probably in return for his assistance with the extensive lands in Essex which Parr received from the crown and through his marriage. That Tyrrell did not make his mark during the years of Parr’s ascendancy may be attributed, especially after 1547, to their contrasting attitudes in religion, but their connexion appears to have survived the stresses of the age. As a Member of Mary’s second Parliament Tyrrell probably helped to secure the passage of the Act (1 Mary st.3, no.—) which restored Parr in blood, and his own appointment, or retention, in the royal household at Elizabeth’s accession coincided with Parr’s recovery of his marquessate.4

With Petre, his kinsman by marriage, Tyrrell maintained a friendship which eventually led each to invoke the other’s assistance in his will, Petre being the first to die and to be mourned by the survivor. Among the friends they had in common were Anthony Browne II, who also remembered Tyrrell in his will, and George White, an overseer of Tyrrell’s. Tyrrell’s Membership was but part of his abundant service to the Marian regime; after helping to defeat Wyatt’s rebels he waged war on heresy in his own shire with a brutal efficiency which made his reputation in the eyes of the Queen and Council but blackened it for posterity. He perhaps owed it to the patronage of Parr and Petre that the coming of Elizabeth brought him no heavier penalty than the cost of his general pardon and the loss of his seat on the Essex bench.5

By his will of 5 Oct. 1576, revising an earlier one, Tyrrell replaced Sir William Petre as trustee for Thomas Tyrrell, his eldest daughter Thomasine Tyrrell’s son who was to succeed to the inheritance. Of the two other daughters mentioned Susan received 1,000 marks. It appears that on the following 6 Nov., when on his deathbed, at Whitstable, Kent, Tyrrell made a further will, the discrepancies between it and the earlier one being the subject of a court sentence.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: D. F. Coros

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from age at grandfather’s i.p.m., C142/71/98. Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiii), 111; Mill Stephenson, Mon. Brasses, 130; F. Chancellor, Anct. Sepul. Mons. of Essex, 170, 173; P. Benton, Rochford, 100 concludes that Susan Cooke came from Kent.
  • 2. Stowe 571, f. 50; CPR, 1553-4, pp. 19, 27, 328; 1554-5, p. 107; 1563-6, pp. 122-3; Essex RO, Q/SR1-14, 67-68; Lansd. 3, f. 198; LC 2/4(2); E407/1/1-8.
  • 3. PCC 33 Carew; E315/225, ff. 1 and v; CPR, 1566-9, p. 139.
  • 4. E403/2450, f. 10; 101/520/9.
  • 5. F. G. Emmison, Tudor Sec. 22, 26, 127-8, 252, 290, 292; PCC 33 Carew, 20 Stonard; Chron. Q. Jane and Q. Mary (Cam. Soc. xlviii), 188; APC, v. 63, 172; vi. 54, 237; CPR, 1553-4, p. 328; 1558-60, p. 237; Foxe, Acts and Mons. vii. 329; viii. 385-6; Strype, Eccles. Memorials, iii(1), 440, 553; J. E. Oxley Ref. in Essex, 205-36 passim.
  • 6. PCC 33 Carew, 30 Bakon; C142/176/48; information from W. J. Tighe.