Family and Education

b. by 1505. m. Elizabeth (?Lane), 3s.1

Offices Held

Clerk of Hastings 1526-34, jurat 1535-7, 1542, 1554, 1556, bailiff 1548-9, 1553-4; bailiff to Yarmouth 1536, 1554.2

Biography

The return gives the name of the junior Member for Hastings in the Parliament of 1542 as Robert Bishop, but no one of that name was active in the port’s affairs at the time and according to a list of later compilation the Member was Richard Bishop, a jurat and former clerk of Hastings. All that is known of Bishop beyond the record of his public career comes from his will of 5 Nov. 1558. He left his lands in Hurst, Sedlescombe and Westfield, Sussex, and his shops in Hastings to his three sons, laying down that the profits from them should be used for their education until the eldest, John, was 24. He appointed a namesake of Battle, Sussex, and his ‘brother’ Thomas Lane, curate of Hastings, executors but they renounced and the will was proved on 24 Aug. 1559 by the widow who had by then married one Lake, possibly Thomas Lake, Member for Hastings in three Elizabethan Parliaments. A John Bishop was a servant of the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, Sir Thomas Cheyne, in 1558.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Patricia Hyde

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. PCC 39 Chaynay.
• 2. Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. (Kent Arch. Soc. recs. br. xix), 198-253 passim.
• 3. C219/18B/145; Add. 34150, f. 138; PCC 1, 39 Chaynay.