Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

On 15 Feb. 1544 ‘Richard Welsche’ was elected a Member for Dorchester in place of Christopher Trenchard who had died. No one of that name is known to have had any personal link with the town, but Welsche may have been a kinsman of its high steward, Sir Thomas Trenchard, since the arms of Fyloll were quartered with those of Walshe (Welsche) during the 16th century and Trenchard’s mother was a Fyloll. He could have been the Richard Walshe of Pilton, Devon, who made his will on 24 Dec. 1550 leaving household stuff and money to his only daughter, married to Robert Salusbury, and his stepson and daughter; the will was proved by his widow on 29 Apr. 1551. He was probably a relative of John Walshe, who was connected by marriage with the Salusburys of Denbighshire and later in his life with the Fylolls. One or other men of his name lived at Berkeley, Gloucestershire, in the 1530s, acquired the reversion to a manor in Herefordshire in 1544, and rented a chamber in the parish of St. Botolph without Aldgate in 1549.

C1/921/8-11; 219/18B/23; Vis. Dorset ed. Colby and Rylands, 39; Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 326; C. H. Mayo, Recs. Dorchester, 320; PCC 12 Bucke, 18 Daper; LP Hen. VIII, xiv, xix; CPR, 1549-51, p. 114.

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

• 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.