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CORBET, Walter, of Impney, Worcs.
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Biography Detail
Related Resources
Constituency
Dates
Family and Education
s. of Roger Corbet of Impney. m. bef. Mich. 1420, Margaret, prob. 1s.
Offices Held
Commr. of inquiry, Worcs. Jan. 1414 (lollards); array May 1418; to assess contributions to a subsidy Apr. 1431.
J.p. Worcs. 12 Feb. 1422-Dec. 1431.
Biography
The Corbets of Impney were a cadet branch of the family of Corbet of Caus, being descended from Robert, 4th Baron of Caus (d.1222), and were closely related to the Corbets of Chaddesley, Worcestershire, and of Leigh, Shropshire. Walter was a minor when his father died, and in October 1383 his marriage and the custody of certain small properties in Impney were purchased from the Crown for £10 by Richard Ruyhale*, an up-and-coming Worcestershire lawyer. Among Corbet’s landed holdings, which were all situated in Worcestershire, were the manor of Cowleigh and land at Madresfield, while his marriage brought him, as his wife’s dower from a previous husband, property in Lickhill and Lower Mitton in Kidderminster. In 1436 he was to be assessed for the purposes of taxation on an estimated income from land of £58 a year.1
Corbet must have come of age well before 1407, when he attended the Worcestershire elections to Parliament and witnessed the indenture recording the return of his former guardian, Ruyhale. In June 1408 he was associated with Hugh Mortimer*, the prince of Wales’s chamberlain, as a co-feoffee of land in Little Dorsington, but there is no evidence of any closer connexion with either Mortimer or the prince. He was again present at the county elections in 1410, and he served on his first royal commission four years later. Early in 1420 Corbet’s name appeared on the list of 13 Worcestershire knights and esquires considered best able to perform military service in defence of the realm and sent by the local j.p.s to the King’s Council, but he is not known to have ever taken part in a campaign in France. Corbet witnessed the electoral indentures for the Parliament of 1421 (May), and was himself elected for the first and probably only time that autumn. He subsequently attended hustings with some regularity, doing so in 1422 (when he stood surety for John Throckmorton*), 1423, 1425 (when he acted similarly for John Brace*), 1431, 1433 and 1435 (then being a mainpernor for John Wood I*). Throckmorton, Brace and Wood were all Corbet’s fellow members of the local bench. Although his life was comparatively uneventful, he would appear to have been of some standing in the locality; indeed, on the electoral indenture of 1433 he was placed second to the wealthy Sir Humphrey Stafford† of Grafton.2
Corbet was succeeded at Impney some time after 1436 by Thomas Corbet, presumably his son.
