Family and Education

Offices Held

Bailiff, Beaumaris 1562; escheator, Anglesey 1567-8; j.p. Beaumaris by 1574, town clerk by 1575; collector of subsidy, Anglesey 1573.1

Biography

Nothing is known about Kenrick’s origins; he may have belonged to the family of that name resident at Maen y driw, Llaneilian, Anglesey. By 1550 he was in the service of Sir Thomas Moyle, surveyor general of the court of augmentations. As such he was able to secure favourable leases of escheated and other lands which came within the jurisdiction of the court. In Caernarvonshire he had before 1551 leased ‘old escheat’ lands in the Creuddyn peninsula which he subsequently disposed of to Robert Pugh, and in 1550 the ‘ruinous’ mill of Boduan in the commote of Llyn, and other lands in Arllechwedd Isaf. Similarly in Anglesey he took out leases in 1565 of lands in Bodedern and Llysdulas; and in Merioneth he petitioned (with what effect does not appear) for a lease of lands which he had himself seized for the Crown before 1553 when the owner was hanged for felony.2

It was presumably after his master’s death in 1560 that he sought civic office in Beaumaris, where he had become a taxpayer (in the lowest category) by 1563. He was, however, at odds with the Bulkeley family of Baron Hill. In 1580, when (Sir) Richard Bulkeley I was involved in the quarrel of the North Wales gentry with the Earl of Leicester over Snowdon forest, Kenrick as bailiff of the borough was summoned by the Privy Council to appear before the Earl to answer for offences against him, and was only released from custody three months later on entering into bonds for a year. No later references to Kenrick are known.3

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: A.H.D.

Notes

• 1. Flenley, Cal. Reg. Council, Marches of Wales , 127, 134; CPR , 1560-3, p. 347; E179/219/16.
• 2. Griffith, Peds. 131; Augmentations , ed. Lewis and Davies (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. xiii), 45 (misplaced under Carmarthenshire, and Kenrick appears as ‘Roland ap Kenner’), 59, 123, 181-2, 191-2, 280, 296-7.
• 3. E179/219/15, 17; G. Roberts, ‘Parl. Hist. Beaumaris’, Trans. Anglesey Antiq. Soc. 1933, pp. 99-100, 106; A. H. Dodd, ‘North Wales in the Essex Revolt’, EHR , lix. 353-4; APC , xi. 418-19; xii. 44.