JACKSON, Anker (-d.1621), of Nottingham, Notts.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010
Available from Cambridge University Press

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

m. by 1577, Christian (d.1633), 3s. (1 d.v.p.) 5da. (2 d.v.p.). bur. 20 Mar. 1621.1

Offices Held

Freeman, Nottingham by 1582, chamberlain 1582-3, sheriff 1584-5, common councilman 1587-95, alderman 1595-d., mayor 1598-9, 1605-6, 1612-13, 1619-20, commr. subsidy 1608, aid 1612.2

Biography

Jackson, a mercer, tended to be in dispute with the corporation for the infringement of common rights and regulations rather more frequently than other aldermen. Nevertheless he had already sat for Nottingham during the reign of Elizabeth and served a term as mayor before he was re-elected in 1604. Throughout the first Stuart Parliament he took no recorded part in debate and was not appointed to any committees. Despite being re-elected as mayor shortly before the beginning of the second session in 1605, he and his colleague, Richard Hurt, brought legal proceedings against the borough’s sheriffs to compel the corporation to pay their wages for the first session, as a result of which £20 was ordered to be paid to Jackson and Hurt in January 1606. His service as mayor probably kept him in Nottingham during the second session, but he was free to attend the Commons again by the start of the third session in November 1606. In March 1608 he presented an expenses claim to the corporation for activities both inside and outside Parliament totalling £7 13s. 4d. In addition to his parliamentary wages, this included 16s. 8d. for copying the will of Sir Thomas White, a sixteenth-century London aldermen who had bequeathed money for charitable purposes in Nottingham, and £3 ‘paid for the order to Sir Thomas Smyth’. This last item presumably relates either to the clerk of the parliaments and Latin secretary Sir Thomas Smith†, or to Sir Thomas Smythe*, the treasurer of the Virginia Company, in which organization a number of prominent townsmen were investors, but the details of the order went unrecorded.3

In 1617 the mayor of Nottingham, Thomas Nix, and others were prosecuted in Star Chamber for libel by the attorney-general. They were accused of publicly singing satirical verses around Nottingham, accusing Jackson and others of rejecting the ceremonies of the established church and of attending conventicles. One of the defendants, William Withington, responded by bringing a counter suit against Jackson and his supporters alleging that they had libelled Withington and Michael Purefoy*, the judge of the Nottinghamshire Archdeaconry Court. However it was Jackson and his allies who prevailed, and in September 1620 Nix was dismissed from the corporation by order of Star Chamber.4 Jackson did not long survive his triumph and was buried the following March in St. May’s, Nottingham. No will or grant of administration has been found and none of his descendants sat in Parliament.5

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Author: George Yerby

Notes

  • 1. Notts. RO, Nottingham, St. Mary and St. Peter par. regs.
  • 2. Recs. of Bor. of Nottingham ed. W.H. Stevenson, iv. 422-30; SP14/31/1; E163/16/21.
  • 3. Recs. of Bor. of Nottingham, iv. 238, 253, 278, 288, 335; Thoroton, Notts. (1790), ii. 48; HP Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 399.
  • 4. STAC 8/303/8; C.J. Sisson, Lost Plays of Shakespeare’s Age, 196; Recs. of Bor. of Nottingham, iv. 365.
  • 5. Notts. RO, St. Mary, Nottingham par. reg.