Roger Wilbraham

Sir Roger Wilbraham (4 November 1553 – 31 July 1616) was a prominent English lawyer who served as Solicitor-General for Ireland, under Elizabeth I and was judged one of her few really competent Law Officers. He held a number of positions at court under James I, including Master of Requests and surveyor of the Court of Wards and Liveries. He bought an estate at Dorfold in the parish of Acton, near his birthplace of Nantwich in Cheshire. He was active in charitable works locally, including founding two sets of almshouses for impoverished men. He also founded almshouses in Monken Hadley, Middlesex, where he is buried.

Biography

Roger Wilbraham was born in Nantwich, Cheshire in 1553, the second of four sons of Richard Wilbraham (1525–1611/12) and his first wife, Elizabeth (d. 1589/90), daughter of Thomas Maisterson. The Wilbraham family was a junior branch of the Wilbrahams of Woodhey, who were prominent in Cheshire affairs from the 13th century onwards; Roger's daughter Elizabeth married into the senior branch of the family.

His father Richard served as Master of the Jewel House to Mary I and also collected revenues for the queen in the Nantwich Hundred. In 1580 Richard built Townshend House on Welsh Row in Nantwich, where James I stayed during his visit to the town in 1617. Wilbraham's attitude to judicial misconduct was cynical and pragmatic: even where a judge's conduct on occasion was disgraceful, if he generally gave good service to the Crown then, unless he was convicted of treason or another capital crime, Wilbraham argued that he should not be punished for it, or removed from office.

Wilbraham himself undoubtedly gave good service to the Crown: in 1597 the Privy Council of Ireland, in a letter to Sir Robert Cecil lamenting the inefficiency of the Irish law officers (especially the recently deceased King's Serjeant, Arthur Corye), exempted Wilbraham from their criticisms, as "he hath taken more care and pains than all the rest". He did much to increase the Crown revenues, and although he made a substantial profit in the process, this was not then regarded as corruption. In 1597 a complaint was made that he was keeping all the fees for making grants on the Exchequer of Ireland for himself, rather than sharing them with the other law officers and the Chief Remembrancer (a senior official in the Exchequer). He kept a journal from 1593 to the end of his life: this shows him to have been a shrewd observer of the political scene, rather than a major political figure in his own right. He was also active in Nantwich's salt-making industry. an acute fever, most likely malaria. He is buried at Monken Hadley.

His three daughters inherited an income supposed to amount to £4000 annually. Mary married Sir Thomas Pelham, 2nd Baronet, Elizabeth married her distant cousin Sir Thomas Wilbraham, 2nd Baronet, and Catherine married Sir Henry Delves, 2nd Baronet, the eldest son of her stepfather Sir Thomas by his first wife.

Charitable works

In 1613, Sir Roger founded Wilbraham's Almshouses for the support of six poor men. They were situated at the end of Welsh Row in Nantwich, and were the town's earliest almshouses. He also founded almshouses for the support of two poor men in Acton in the same year. Additionally, he gave £4 to be distributed among the poor of Nantwich on Good Friday every year.

References and sources