Family and Education

b. by 1487. m. Willmyne, 1s.2

Offices Held

Jurat, New Romney from 1508; bailiff to Yarmouth 1522.3

Biography

Robert Paris regularly attended the Brotherhood of the Cinque Ports between 1508 and 1536 as a jurat of Romney, but when he was chosen a bailiff to Yarmouth in 1522 he and two of his three colleagues—Thomas Cheseman aliasBaker and Edmund Franke—were unable to make their report to the Brotherhood held the following Easter as they were Members of the Parliament then in session: the name of his fellow-Member is unknown. All that has come to light about Paris outside the record of his public life derives from his will of 20 Jan. 1546 in which he asked for burial in the churchyard of St. Martin’s, Romney: to his wife Willmyne he left £4 to be paid in instalments, ‘in the name of her dowry’, household stuff and livestock, and to his son and executor Thomas his house and the four acres belonging to it. But the will bears no date of probate and, despite his evidently modest status, it is tempting to identify Paris with the gentleman of that name who on 9 Oct. 1550 was assaulted at Newbury, Berkshire by John Cheyne II and others and who died of his wounds four days later. The murder victim was probably the second husband of Elizabeth Jackman whose first husband John Knight I had died on 13 Jan. 1550.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

• 1. Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. (Kent Arch. Soc. recs. br. xix), 185, 187.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Canterbury prob. reg. C21, f. 45.
• 3. Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. 141 seq.
• 4. Ibid. 185, 187; Canterbury prob. reg. C21, f. 45; CPR, 1550-3, p. 239; Vis. Berks. (Harl. Soc. lvii), 166.