ROANE, Anthony (d.1583), of Hounslow, Mdx.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1571

Family and Education

1st s. of Humphrey Roane of Whiston, Yorks. by Marian, da. of one Selby of Yorks. m. (1) Alice Dale, s.p.; (2) Audrey, da. of Thomas Fernley of Creeting St. Mary, Suff., 3s. 1da.

Offices Held

Under-auditor of Exchequer by 1558; j.p.q. Mdx. by 1569.1

Biography

Roane had a little land in the West Riding of Yorkshire at Adel, Cottingham and Wooderson; at one time he also owned the site of Middlesbrough priory, which he sold in 1572. Apart from a crown lease in Carmarthenshire, the rest of his estate was in the south of England. At his death he left fee-simple land in Hatton and Heston, Middlesex, as well as his house at Hounslow and the New Inn and a ‘brewing-house’ there. When in London he presumably lived in the parish of St. Botolph-without-Aldersgate, where he was churchwarden from 1568-9.2

His early career is obscure, but he may have been a minor Exchequer official before 1558, when he was granted the reversion to an auditorship then held by Francis Southwell. The latter did not die until November 1581, but a ‘Mr. Roane’ is described as an auditor as early as June 1558, several months before the patent of reversion was enrolled. Unless there were two Roanes serving in the Exchequer, the 1571 Member was thus an under-auditor before the end of Mary’s reign. He was often employed in the north. On 23 Nov. 1569 Sir Ralph Sadler reported a meeting with him at Burton Stathes, near Barton. ‘Mr. Rone, one of her Majesty’s auditors, who was at York yesterday with my Lord Sussex’ (Sir Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd Earl) had given him a gloomy picture of the military position, saying that the army of the rebellious earls was much stronger than the loyal forces, and that York was running short of supplies. Three days later, however, Sadler wrote again to the Council, describing Roane as ‘a known fearful man’, whose depressing information he now found to be exaggerated.3

During the 1571 Parliament the corporation of York wrote to ‘Mr. Anthony Rowe, esquire, the Queen’s Majesty’s auditor of Yorkshire’, telling him that their parliamentary representatives wished to know particulars of the Queen’s lands in Yorkshire and in the city. If he would help them with his counsel, the mayor and his brethren would be very glad to ‘pleasure’ him ‘if that occasion will serve’. Roane evidently complied with the request, but the burgesses for York ‘could not perceive’ from his books what chantry lands ‘were sold or unsold’. These official connexions with Yorkshire as well as his Yorkshire origins, presumably explain his election to Parliament for Ripon in 1571.4

By this time Roan’s name had begun to appear on Middlesex commissions of the peace, and after 1572 no further references to him in Yorkshire have been found. In January 1576 he was summoned before the Privy Council in London, possibly to give information about the finances of the Savoy, and later in the same year he was asked to investigate complaints of unlawful enclosure of common land by Sir Thomas Gresham in Osterley park. This must have been a delicate task, as he was on very friendly terms with Sir Thomas’s family. Lady Anne Gresham, a relative of Roane’s second wife, was godmother to his daughter, who was named after her.5

Roane died on or about 11 May 1583. The preamble to his will, which was dated 8 Mar. and proved 24 May, quotes Job’s statement that man has but a short time to live and is ‘replenished with many miseries’, and continues with an assurance of escape from death and damnation through Christ’s passion. ‘I, most wretched sinner’, give God hearty thanks for all His gifts ‘and therefore I do say Amen’. He wished to be buried at Hounslow ‘in decent order without pomp’, a learned man being present to ‘exhort the audience to amendment of life whilst time is’. An annuity of £2 was provided for the maintenance of a reader in his house, The Friars, at Hounslow ‘for the divine service’, and any parishioners were welcome to attend the readings. The will included bequests of £200 to Roane’s daughter Anne, £100 to his eldest son Edward (who was only nine years old) on his 22nd birthday, and valuable plate to other relatives and friends. His wife, Audrey, was appointed sole executrix, with four overseers, among them John Conyers. The widow married Sir Edmund Brudenell shortly after Roane’s death, and as she herself died soon afterwards, there were further grants of probate in 1584 and 1587, the first to Sir Edmund and the second to Thomas Brudenell.6

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes

  • 1. Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiii), 281; Mdx. Peds. (Harl. Soc. lxv), 51; APC, vi. 335; CSP Dom. 1547-80, p. 109; CPR, 1569-72, pp. 226, 290.
  • 2. CPR, 1563-6, p. 159; PCC 20 Rowe; C142/276/550; VCH Yorks. N. Riding, ii. 270; LP Hen. VIII, xxi(1), p. 682; CSP Dom. Add. 1566-79, pp. 62, 76.
  • 3. CPR, 1563-6, p. 303; SP38/1; PCC 9 Tirwhite; APC, vi. 335; CSP Dom. Add. 1566-79, pp. 115-16, 124.
  • 4. York Civic Recs. (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. cxv), 24, 28.
  • 5. Lansd. 109, f. 156; APC, ix. 75, 167.
  • 6. PCC 29 Rowe; C142/276/550, which gives the date of death a year too early.