Family and Education

b. 1522, o.s. of Andrew Edmonds of Cressing Temple, Essex by Elizabeth, da. and coh. of Thomas Bledlow of Bledlow, Bucks. educ. L. Inn 1541. m. bet. 1554 and 1560, Dorothy (d.1615), da. of Christopher Lidcott or Litcott of Ruscombe, Berks., s.p. suc. fa. 1523. Kntd. 1592.

Offices Held

J.p. Oxon. from c.1514.

Biography

Edmonds’s early career was in all probability sponsored by his step-father John Williams^†, later Lord Williams of Thame, treasurer of the court of augmentations. Edmonds was ‘the Queen’s servant’ by 1560, though his precise post, if any, has not been ascertained. He and Williams together speculated heavily in monastic lands, but Edwards retained little of this property and at his death his only estate was the manor of Lewknor, which was granted in 1565 to him and his wife, a gentlewoman of the privy chamber to Queen Elizabeth. Edmonds came into Parliament for Wallingford through the influence of Sir Henry Norris I, 1st Lord Norris of Rycote, who had married Edmonds’s half-sister. It is not known how he came to be returned for Buckingham.

He made his will in June or July 1595, appointing his wife executrix and residuary legatee. She proved the will in December 1596. In leaving money for sermons to be preached by a minister at Lewknor, Edmonds asked that he should not ‘deal with matters in controversy, but to leave them to divinity schools’.

C142/40/47; Vis. Bucks. (Harl. Soc. lviii), 64; Morant, Essex, i. 461; LP Hen. VIII, xix(1), p. 640; xix(2), p. 311; xx(2), pp. 117, 544; CPR, 1558-60, p. 391; 1563-6, p. 283; PCC 14 Bodfielde, 87 Drake, 79 Rudd.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: Roger Virgoe

Notes