Family and Education

b. by 1517. educ. ?M. Temple. m. at least 2 da.1

Offices Held

Biography

Little trace has been found of Robert Wheatley. Styled ‘gentleman’ on each of his returns, he was perhaps a member of a minor family found in several northern counties: his daughter Anne was to marry into its most important branch at Woolley in Yorkshire. He may have been a lawyer, although the ‘Mr. Wheteley’ found at the Middle Temple during the 1550s and 1560s is more likely to have been William Wheatley of Little Walsingham, Norfolk, a master of the bench there. A connexion with the law might explain both Robert Wheatley’s presence in London in 1538, when he leased Silloth grange in Cumberland for 21 years, and his recurrent election to Parliament from 1545, for which he probably had the support of William, 3rd Lord Dacre, an influential figure in the boroughs concerned. In addition to his known elections he could have been returned for Appleby to the Parliament of March 1553 for which the names are missing. He may have been one of the ‘friends’ mentioned by his fellow-Member Thomas Jolye (q.v.) who on 5 Jan. 1549 opposed the bill to deprive the find Earl of Cumberland of his hereditary shrievalty.2

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. J. Taylor

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Fam. Min. Gent. (Harl. Soc. xxxiii), 596.
• 2. C219/18C/131, 19/118, 23/36; M.T. Recs. i. 115, 123, 153, 164, 210, 213; M.T. Adm. i. 19; LP Hen. VIII, xiii; CPR, 1555-7, pp. 321-2; Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. lix. 100; Clifford Letters (Surtees Soc. clxxii), 101-3.