Family and Education

b. by 1504, 2nd s. of Oates Worth (d.1504) of Compton Pole by Alice, da. of John Milleton of Meavy. m. by 1539, Joan, da. of Henry Drew of Barnstaple, 3s. 7da.1

Offices Held

Mayor, Barnstaple 1549-50.2

Biography

A younger son in a cadet branch of the family settled at Worth in Devon, Roger Worth had namesakes in the service of Viscount Lisle and the 2nd Lord Daubeney. Himself a merchant, he was assessed at 10s. for the subsidies of 1540 and later years; in 1546 he came to the notice of the Privy Council as one of the purchasers of goods taken by privateers. In the previous year he had shared with John Goddisland and another in leasing the ‘lathstedes’ in the town, the pyx of the market-toll and the annual fair; in 1550 he leased property which had belonged to a chantry in the parish church.3

Worth’s services to the town included the entertaining of successive recorders and other visitors and riding to the recorder on business. It was with the future recorder (and his probable relative by marriage) Robert Carey that he was returned to the first Marian Parliament, in which neither of them opposed the restoration of Catholicism. Worth was buried in Barnstaple church on 4 Oct. 1564. His will, which was proved on the following 27 July, was one of those in the Exeter probate registry destroyed in an air raid in 1942.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: A. D.K. Hawkyard

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from fa.’s death. Vis. Devon, ed. Colby, 212-13; N. Devon Athenaeum, Barnstaple D. Drake ms ‘MPs Barnstaple’, 25.
• 2. J. B. Gribble, Branstaple, 201.
• 3. LP Hen. VIII, x-xii, xx; APC, i. 426-7; N. Devon Athenaeum 3972, ff. 47, 49-50.
• 4. CPR, 1548-9, p. 380; Barnstaple Wills, ed. Beckerlegge, 1816; E179/97/214.