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The election indenture for Dunheved to the second Marian Parliament does not survive, and the name of the junior Member is known only from a list of Members, where it appears as ‘Arthurus Welche’. Since no one so named has been traced, other than a townsman of Morpeth who sat in the Parliament of 1563, the possibility has to be envisaged that the name was either mis-spelt on the indenture or wrongly copied onto the list. In the case of the christian name the most likely substitution would have been that of ‘Arthurus’ for ‘Anthonius’, whereas for the surname no such simple variant presents itself.

Three men of the time named Anthony Welsh can be distinguished, an exchequer clerk, a younger son in the family of Little Sodbury, Gloucestershire, and this one’s kinsman a Monmouthshire gentleman. The first had business dealings with the court of augmentations, where the Mildmay brothers Thomas and Walter were auditors, a capacity in which they also served the duchy of Cornwall, but his claim to consideration is weakened by the absence of any reference to him after 1543. The second was to succeed his father Maurice Welshe of Little Sodbury for a few months in 1556, but as a youngster of 22 at the time of the election he would have needed patronage or connexion of which no trace has been found. Finally, Anthony Welshe of Llanwarne, Herefordshire, and Dinham, Monmouthshire, who might have enjoyed such an advantage through his contemporary at the Inner Temple Thomas Williams II, an associate of the Edgecombe family and the 1st Earl of Bedford, is all but excluded from consideration on the score of his having been sheriff of Monmouthshire during the year concerned.

LP Hen. VIII, xiii, xv-xxi; Vis. Glos.(Harl. Soc. xxi), 266; Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans. xxi. 19; C142/60/23, 109/71, 77, 134/219; CPR, 1553, pp. 360, 418; 1558-60, p. 188; 1560-3, pp. 144, 598; PCC 5 Peter.

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: S. T. Bindoff

Notes