Family and Education

b. by 1509, 2nd s. of Sir Thomas Lacon of Willey by Mary, da. of Sir Richard Corbet of Moreton Corbet. unm. 1s. illegit.1

Offices Held

Biography

The Lacons were one of the three or four wealthiest families in Shropshire and the most influential one at Wenlock. Edward Lacon’s father had married into the foremost of Shropshire houses and was three times sheriff, but the belief that he was returned to Parliament for Bridgnorth in 1510 rests on the insufficient evidence that he was made free of that borough not long before the Parliament.2

When Sir Thomas Lacon died in 1536 Edward Lacon, who was a supervisor of his will, came into a certain amount of property at Kenley and at ‘Childswoodlands’ near Broseley which was to involve him in lawsuits with others of the family. Until 1537 he received from Buildwas abbey the comparatively large annuity of £3 6s.8d., but he does not seem to have been compensated when the abbey was dissolved and its new owner exempted from paying annuities. He was to remain an undistinguished figure even after his elder brother died soon after being sheriff in 1540-1, leaving as heir a minor, Roland Lacon^†. It is therefore to his family’s standing rather than his own that his election may be ascribed, although if Wenlock heeded the crown’s preference for the return of residents the choice of Lacon, who had been admitted to the freedom in 1530 and who was described on the return as ‘of Woodlands within the liberties of Much Wenlock’, would have partially met it. Whether religion entered into the matter is not clear: the Lacon family is said to have been Catholic in sympathy, but in 1564 Roland was reputed a ‘favourer’ of the Anglican settlement.3

Lacon died unmarried and intestate in 1564, and on 4 Sept. of that year the administration was granted to Roland Lacon as next of kin. His renunciation of the task a year later on the ground that there were ‘no goods’ to dispose of suggests that his uncle had ended his days in poverty.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Alan Harding

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from admission as freeman. Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxix), 307.
• 2. Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 4), v. 42.
• 3. C142/58/60; PCC 34 Hogen; ECP, vii. 139, 148; x. 68; LP Hen. VIII, xii; VCH Salop, viii. 152; Much Wenlock min. bk. f. 79; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 3), ii. 315; Cam. Misc. ix(3), 15.
• 4. PCC Admins. ed. Glencross, i. 53.