TOLDERVEY, Christopher (d.1613), of Allhallows, Lombard Street, 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

1597
1601
1604

Family and Education

m. Susan, da. of John Anwick, at least 2s. 2da.

Offices Held

Biography

Toldervey was a London merchant who lived at one time in Sandwich. He leased property in Kent, and must have been known to the Hythe corporation, but whether he was known to them prior to his first return for the borough is not clear. Possibly he owed his first election to John Smythe I, whose seat at Westenhanger, where Toldervey had a third share in the park, was near to the borough. Smythe was the son of ‘Customer’ Smythe of London, who left Toldervey £200 ‘for his great care in my affairs’. When Toldervey came to make his own will he appointed Sir John Smythe as overseer, to share the custody of the two sons with Sir John Scott. Scott, a relative of the Smythes, also had influence in the district, and when, as after the death of William, 10th Lord Cobham, in March 1597, the lord warden of the Cinque Ports appears not to have nominated at Hythe, the Smythe-Scott connexion was probably strong enough to sway the election. By 1601 there was a new lord warden, Cobham’s son and heir, the 11th and last Lord Cobham, but Toldervey had connexions with him too, for he is soon found living or working in Cobham’s London house, and it was quite possibly Cobham who nominated him to the 1601 Parliament. The only reference to him in the Elizabethan House of Commons is as a member of a committee on the penal laws on 8 Nov. 1597, but as one of the Hythe MPs he could have sat on the main business committee (3 Nov. 1601) and the Severn harbour committee (21 Nov. 1601).

A Londoner, Toldervey was assessed for the 1589 subsidy in Bishopsgate ward on £50 property. In 1598 he paid £10 subsidy. He held shares in the mines royal and the mineral and battery works, and died wealthy. In his will, dated 12 Jan. 1613, he left one daughter £2,000 and the other £1,200. The elder son, Christopher, who became a Kent country gentleman and died only five years after his father, was to have an annuity of £100 until the age of 30, when he would receive the profits of leases at Newington, Faversham and Barksore; while John, the younger son, received Halstowe parsonage and an annuity of £60.

Arch. Cant. xvii. 203; xxv. 130; xl. 126; G. Wilks, Barons of the Cinque Ports and the Parl. Rep. Hythe, 65-6; Townshend, Hist. Colls. 103; D’Ewes, 624, 647; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xv), 133; (cix and cx), 151; E179/146/369; HMC Hatfield, ix. 425; x. 217, 348; xvii. 63; M. B. Donald. Eliz. Monopolies, 54, 64-5, 72, 73, 132, 192; PCC 39 Capell; Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. xlii), 187; C142/367/70.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: R.C.G.

Notes