Roger Townshend

Sir Roger Townshend KS (died 1493) was an English landowner, judge and politician. Though his ancestors had held lands in Norfolk for generations, their estates being centred on the village of Raynham, he was the first of his family to attain national prominence.

Origins Probably born in the 1420s, he was the son of Sir John Townshend (died 1465) and his second wife Joan, daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Lunsford, of Romford in Essex.

Career Sent to study at Lincoln's Inn in 1454, where he was first elected a Governor in 1461 and first elected a Reader in 1468, he was his father's heir in 1465. As well as legal practice, he was returned to Parliament for Bramber in 1467 and for Calne in 1472. In 1483 he was made Third Justice of the Court of Common Pleas by King Richard III, after the promotion of John Catesby, and the next king, Henry VII, kept him in post, knighting him at Worcester in 1486. After Catesby's death in 1486, he was made Second Justice. In addition to his High Court duties, he sat as a justice of the peace and as an assize judge for several counties. who survived him, serving as his executrix and dying on 5 September 1500.

Ancestry