Roger Corbet

Part of the medieval keep at Moreton Corbet. The castle was still a serious fortification for a dynasty of Marcher Lords when it was Roger Corbet's childhood home.

Roger Corbet (died 1430) was an English soldier, politician and landowner. He was a client of Thomas FitzAlan, 12th Earl of Arundel and was implicated in the disorder that accompanied Arundel's rule in Shropshire. He probably fought at the Battle of Agincourt. After the untimely death of his patron, he became a successful municipal politician at Shrewsbury and represented Shrewsbury twice and Shropshire once in the House of Commons of England.

Background and early life Roger Corbet was the younger brother of Robert Corbet (1383–1420) and was frequently associated with him. However, Roger's very existence is omitted by several sources. He does not figure in the Corbet family pedigrees in the heraldic visitations of Shropshire Augusta Corbet, the family historian, also gives a pedigree of the Corbets of Moreton Corbet which omits him. She quotes extensive complaints to the 1415 parliament, in the original Anglo-Norman language, in which numerous misdeeds are listed, but insists that they refer to Robert's younger son of the same name, who was probably unborn, at most an infant, at that time. It is with his this nephew that he is generally confused.

Roger therefore had the same background as Robert, his brother. His parents were:

Sir Roger Corbet of Moreton Corbet. The Corbet family had been important in the Welsh Marches since the Norman Conquest. The Moreton Corbet branch of the family had become the most important in Shropshire after the Corbet line at Caus Castle was replaced in 1347 by Ralph de Stafford, 1st Earl of Stafford, A struggle by the Moreton Corbet branch to prevent property being dispersed through female heirs had greatly preoccupied Sir Roger. Margaret Erdington, daughter of Sir Giles Erdington of Erdington, Warwickshire. The Erdington's became even more involved in the Corbets' bitter property disputes because Sir Roger's sister, Margaret Corbet, married his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Erdington.

The younger Roger Corbet's birth date is unknown but must have been after 1383, as he was definitely younger than his brother, who was born in December of that year. The heraldic visitation lists two sisters, Johanna or Joan and Elianora or Eleanor. Their parents died within a few months of each other in 1395. The eldest son, Robert, was not yet 12 and entered a period of wardship – granted to Thomas Percy, 1st Earl of Worcester. by Richard II but transferred under Henry IV to John Burley, a retainer of Thomas FitzAlan, 12th Earl of Arundel. That is: when one of them, a man called Roger Leyney, obtained a writ against him, Roger pursued him to Dunstable with armed party of five, and suddenly confronted the man at his hostel, yelling "who made thee so hardy to put any bill to the King to undo me withall?" – the single English phrase standing out starkly in an otherwise Anglo-Norman document and signifying the sense of impunity that had hitherto accompanied the rule of the Arundel affinity. Despite Leyney's attempts to come to an accommodation, Roger had set about him, bata, naufra, et ses chambes coupa, luy endonant pluseurs autres horribles ployes a son final anientisement et grauntz maheime Corbet had beaten and wounded the man, hacking at his legs and causing horrible sufferings, maiming him seriously.

These complaints of "great mayhem" prompted the king himself to preside over the Court of King's Bench at Shrewsbury in Trinity term The constitution of the town had been reformed in the 1380s under the auspices of the 11th Earl of Arundel, who claimed to be its "hereditary protector," and the council fixed at 12 members. Corbet was elected as bailiff on Saint Giles ' Day, 1 September 1416, together with John Perle, an experienced municipal politician with a similarly turbulent past to his own – except that Perle had carried out his depredations against the Arundels. Corbet and Perle carried through a reform of tax collection in the borough shortly after their election. The constitution of the borough envisaged only one term for bailiffs, with a three-year disqualification from civic office following.

Marriage and family

Connected with Corbet's new-found respectability in his later years was a marriage to an heiress of wealthy family. His wife, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Sir William Lichfield of Eastham, Worcestershire, and Elizabeth Cornwall.

Sir William was an MP for Worcestershire and twice High Sheriff of Shropshire. Although he held substantial lands in both counties, the Lichfields were from the cathedral town of Lichfield in Staffordshire. Through inheritance from his relatives, Sir William acquired a considerable amount of property in Staffordshire, including land at Freeford and the estate of Abnalls, near Burntwood. However, the origins of the Lichfields were fairly humble and their surname was also given as Taverner, after the occupation of an ancestor: William the taverner, also known as William of Lichfield, was bailiff of Lichfield in 1308 and later twice represented the Borough of Lichfield in Parliament. The family also used the name Swinfen, from a village of that name near Lichfield. Sir William had a number of relatives who sometimes used these names and served in Parliament They included his uncle Aymer Lichfield alias Swinfen, who twice represented Staffordshire, and his cousin Roger Lichfield alias Swinfen, a Worcester MP. Through both of these he inherited property, although in Aymer's case a good deal of debt too.

Corbet's mother-in-law was descended, through an illegitimate son of Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall, and King of the Romans, from King John. Her father, Sir John Cornwall, was twice a Shropshire MP and a close associate of John Darras, the husband of Corbet's aunt, and of John Burley, who held Robert Corbet's wardship. He died in 1414, while awaiting trial for murder, and his daughter Elizabeth was his sole heiress. This meant that Corbet's wife could look forward to inheriting the properties of two wealthy parents. However, an early death meant Roger Corbet never enjoyed this wealth and was not to initiate a new and wealthy branch of the Corbet family, as he and Elizabeth Lichfield had only one daughter, Margaret. The dispute and its ramifications rumbled on, with the Ferrers family apparently holding sway in the 1470s but Humphrey Stafford vindicating his rights later, until 1485, when Walter Devereux, 8th Baron Ferrers of Chartley was killed at the Battle of Bosworth and his lands confiscated. This led to further problems, as the Crown and its agents looked again into the Ferrers claims, and in a subsequent contest there was armed conflict between Stafford's heir, Margaret Vere, and the Cornwall family.

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