KEMP, Bartholomew, of London.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1586

Family and Education

6th s. of Bartholomew Kemp of Gissing, Norf., by Anne, da. of John Alleyn of Bury St. Edmunds, Suff. m. Barbara, da. of Robert Sharpe of Bury St. Edmunds by a yr. sis. of Sir Nicholas Bacon, 2s.

Offices Held

Treasurer to Sir Nicholas Bacon, ld. keeper; clerk for writing presentations and donations to benefices in Chancery by 1591.

Biography

Early in the period Kemp was a deputy in the court of faculties, granting dispensations. He afterwards became treasurer to his relative by marriage Sir Nicholas Bacon, who had lands near the Kemp family home at Gissing, and who left bequests to Kemp and his wife. It was no doubt through the Bacon family that Kemp came into Parliament for Eye and Castle Rising. Nothing has been ascertained about Kemp’s return for Shaftesbury, which was usually controlled by the earls of Pembroke. Nor has any record survived of any activity by Kemp in any Parliament. He may have been the ‘Mr. Kemp’, a ‘trusty servant’ of Sir Christopher Hatton in 1585. Certainly it was while Hatton was chancellor in December 1591 that Kemp and his son Nicholas were granted the office of clerk for writing presentations in Chancery. He probably already held the office, the new patent being to secure his son’s succession. Kemp died, as it appears intestate, some time between 1591 and April 1607 when his widow, living at the Savoy Rents in the Strand, and ‘being aged and weak of body’, made her will.

Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. xliii), 119; PCC 1 Bakon, 41 Wood; A. Simpson, Wealth of the Gentry, 22, 27; 86; CSP Dom.1547-80, p. 190; 1591-4, p. 144; Blomefield, Norf. i. 55; Nicolas, Hatton, 380.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: Roger Virgoe

Notes