Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

In the absence of a pedigree of the Martin family and of any reference to a John Martin in connexion with Berwick this Member has not been identified. There was a family of that or a similar name associated with the government of the town later in the 16th century, and it is perhaps only the incompleteness of the first guild book of Berwick between the years 1509 and 1537 which has left John Martin unrecorded. On the other hand, the Member may not have been a townsman. In the retinue book of the 4th Earl of Northumberland at Newcastle for October 1523 a John Martin is named under the barony of Leconfield, Yorkshire, and either he or a namesake was the groom of the chamber who was granted an annuity by the earl out of a manor in the North Riding. His equally obscure fellow-Member, John Cooper, may have been likewise a Percy follower. Yet another possibility is that Martin was the member of Wolsey’s household who during the 1520s made a subsidy payment of £2. Nothing further is known of him, but if he saw this Parliament through he was presumably returned to that of 1536, in accordance with the King’s general request for the re-election of the previous Members.

J. Scott, Berwick, 479; Cal. Border Paprs., ii. 796; E101/531/34; E179/69/9.

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. J. Taylor

Notes