"In depth" William Rowley (1572-1645) of Rowley's House and Mansion Hill's Lane

New Ship Inn Yard, Shrewsbury (image) [+]
New Ship Inn Yard c1930s. (Image courtesy of Shrewsbury Museums Service and www.darwincountry.org)

Rowley’s House in Shrewsbury, which from 1936 until 2006 housed the Borough museum, is one of the town’s best-known timber-framed buildings. It now stands in isolation, the result essentially of the clearance in the 1930s of the ‘huddled mass of timber-framed buildings in the area bounded by Hill’s Lane and Barker Street’. (1) The complex actually comprises two quite distinct parts: Rowley’s House itself, a long timber-framed range, of three storeys and an attic; and abutting it to the north, Rowley’s Mansion, probably built c. 1616-1618, a high quality brick and stone house of three storeys and an attic, with several interior rooms once adorned with fine plaster-work. Rowley’s Mansion is also the earliest surviving example in the town of the use of brick to build a house, though another early brick house, not far away at the rear of the New Ship Inn, was also demolished as part of the 1930s clearances. (2) Also lost at that time was a long single-storey range on the southern edge of the property, which had at the end towards Hill’s Lane an unusual roof structure cantilevered across the courtyard to provide cover for loading wagons. In the past the whole of this very large commercial and residential complex was sometimes known simply as Rowley’s Mansion.

William Rowley’s family ‘took its name from Rowley, in Worfield parish [3¼ miles NE of Bridgnorth], where they were seated from at least the mid 13th century, the first member of the family of whom notice has been found being William Rowley, who appears on the Shrewsbury Guild Merchant roll of 1252. . . Supposedly the seventh in descent from William was John Rowley (d. 1566), described in the Worfield register as “yeoman householder”. He is said to have acquired a fortune by marriage with Mary Barrett, a widow of Astley Abbots. He was succeeded at Rowley by his eldest son Roger (I), who married Ann, daughter of William King of Birmingham. (3) At least three of their sons found commercial success as maltsters, brewers and drapers. At Rowley Roger (d. 1624) was succeeded by his son, also Roger (II), perhaps the builder of the existing house there and its stone malthouse. He prospered sufficiently to buy the sequestrated Apley estate [seized by Parliament], near Bridgnorth, of Sir William Whitmore for £583. Another of the elder Roger Rowley’s sons, John, became a London merchant, being described thus in 1623 when 47 years old. The third son was William Rowley of Shrewsbury.’ (4)

William Rowley, after whom both House and Mansion take their name, was a draper-brewer, admitted as a burgess of Shrewsbury in 1594, and to the Drapers’ company of the town in 1597. (5) Suit lists, which record the residence of men who were obliged to attend the Shrewsbury Great Court, show that Rowley at first lived in Shoplatch, and it was not until 1605 that he moved to Hill’s Lane, then known as Knockyn Steeet. (6) Living in that street was Richard Cherwell, himself admitted to the Drapers’ company in 1583. He had in fact been elected one of the town bailiffs for the year 1604-05, but died in office. His grandfather Thomas had been a brewer, and was practising that trade in Knockyn Street by the 1520s. (7) In the suit list for 1605 Richard Cherwell’s name was crossed out with a note that he had died, and the fact that Rowley came to live in the same street almost immediately afterwards, and that the Cherwells had been involved in the brewing trade, raises the possibility of a connection between the two men.

That indeed was the case. In a lawsuit at London in the following year (1606), in which Rowley was defendant, it was alleged that when Cherwell died, ‘the possession of all or the most part of the lands, tenements, goods and chattels of the said Cherwell are by some means, assurance or conveyance in law come to the hands, custody and possession of the said William Rowley for the satisfying or security, saving and keeping harmless of the said William Rowley of and from all such debts which he the said William Rowley had entered into or undertaken for or in the behalf of the said Cherwell.’ (8) The pleadings in this suit show that Rowley also attended the Oswestry cloth market, and employed another of his younger brothers, Thomas, as a factor (agent) in London. He and Cherwell had sometimes lodged together on their business travels, and Rowley’s servant had run errands for Cherwell, on whose behalf Rowley claimed to have laid out altogether £400. It seems likely that the two men were in partnership, something that was becoming more common in the Drapers’ company at this time, enabling masters to raise the capital needed to handle the growing volume of trade. (9) If so, the partnership was clearly on a significant scale, as Cherwell was also employed by the Crown to remit tax revenues to London through his own factor, no doubt by means of bills of exchange.

Although Rowley in 1606 may have had a legal claim on Cherwell’s property, his interest was not apparently secured until a few years later. In 1612 a fine (collusive action for conveying property) reveals that in that year he purchased twelve messuages and four gardens in Shrewsbury from a Joseph Cherwell, presumably a relation of Richard’s. (10) Clearly a substantial amount of property was involved, and that it included at least some property in Knockyn Street is confirmed by the borough rentals. As the ultimate lord of the land, the Borough claimed a nominal fee-farm rent of 4d. from a tenement there, and the rentals show that between 1580 and 1686 the tenement was held in turn by Roger Cherwell (Richard’s father), Richard Cherwell, and members and descendants of the Rowley family, including John Hill after whom the street is now named. (11) However, William Rowley is known to have added to his estate in that area by other conveyances. In 1610 he took out a lease from the Drapers’ company of property both in Knockyn Street and in the little lane that connected that street to Romaldesham (Barker Street); and by tracing this property in the Drapers’ rentals up to the 20th century, it can be shown to have included what was later known as the Bugle Inn, located on the south side of the lane to which it gave its name, together with adjacent property including a back parlour (as it was by then) of the Old Ship Inn in that part of Romaldesham later known as Bridge Street. (12) In 1614 Rowley also bought garden land extending back from the Bugle Inn site (i.e. towards Rowley’s Mansion), (13) and after 1610 either he or his descendants acquired three more tenements in Knockyn Street which had once belonged to the Ireland family. (14) As the Ireland holdings in Shrewsbury were almost entirely composed of ex-monastic lands – see the entry on Robert Ireland of Ireland’s Mansion – it is no surprise to find that two of these tenements had indeed been held by Shrewsbury abbey in c. 1470. At that date they stood beside a mill, (15) and since brewing was taking place in the vicinity by the early 16th century, it is possible that the mill was connected to that trade.

Clearly, once he had come to reside in Knockyn Street in 1605 William Rowley then invested a great deal of money in consolidating and greatly extending his property there. It has been stated that the layout of Rowley’s Mansion at least ‘makes relatively poor use of the land’, and aesthetic reasons may partly explain this. For example, the desire to impress with numerous windows may have been the reason behind the angling of the two ranges of the Mansion and the addition of the porch: ‘It created a grand three-quarter view of the entrance to the house.’ (16) The garden ground too, acquired in 1614, may have been bought for the walled garden which later illustrations show lying adjacent to the Mansion on that side, and extending in the direction of Bugle Lane. In contrast the other more commercial parts of the complex indicate considerable pressure on the available land, with steps being taken to maximize its use, which ‘presumably accounts for the odd angles at which the buildings were laid out – perhaps abutting road or property boundaries, as well as earlier buildings.’ (17) The documentary evidence provided above also raises the obvious possibility that if Rowley’s House, i.e. the timber-framed range, was erected before 1605, it would have been Cherwell rather than William Rowley who was responsible. (18) In the 1930s the Borough Surveyor Mr. A.W. Ward, considered from close examination that Rowley’s House actually post-dated the Mansion. More recent investigation of this, admittedly complex structure, suggests that the main timber-framed range may in fact be earlier than the Mansion, but only slightly and dating ‘from the early years of the 17th century’ (19) So perhaps Rowley rather than Cherwell was after all responsible. In fact Rowley was presented by the Romaldesham (Barker Street) householders in October 1618 for obstructing the street with timber, and it is tempting to link this presentment to building work at Rowley’s House. (20)

One part of Rowley’s House, however, can perhaps be dated with more confidence – the south stair tower, an infill block added later in the angle between the east wall of the main range and the north wall of the east wing. It stands, much restored, to the left of the old Museum entrance. This once included a stair, dated 1641, which was removed and sent to America about 30 years before the restoration of 1932. (21) Beneath the stair tower ran a covered passage which led to Barker Street. (22) As for Rowley’s Mansion, the records show that by 1636 William Rowley had put in a trap door, located in Knockyn Street, to provide access to his cellar, and this no doubt explains the entry in the 1657 town rental which shows that William’s son Roger paid a small rent for ‘an encroachment at his brick house there whereon he hath builded a case to cover the stairs into his ground cellar.’ (23)

By 1635 William Rowley had, according to the awed visitor Sir William Brereton, ‘A very vast great brew house . . . the brewing vessels wherein are capable of 100 measures’. (24) The brewhouse was supplied with water by a waterworks with a pump located on a plot of land, 33 x 15 yards, lying immediately outside the town wall on the banks of the Severn between Mardol Quay and the postern gate at Cripplelode. This land, part of the corporation estate, had originally been granted by the borough in 1565 when it was said to stand alongside an old ‘defaced’ tower on the town walls, beneath which a ‘sink hole or gutter’ ran (Bodl. Lib. MS Gough Shrop. 6, fo. 52v; Gough Shrop. 12, fo. 97r). William Rowley had petitioned for a grant of this strip of land in 1620, and this was agreed to in 1622 (SA 6001/2795, p. 214). The Rowleys also kept a rubbish-dump there, doubtless for the brewery waste. (25) The brewhouse itself was described in some detail in a Chancery suit of 1655-7 which arose from a family dispute following William’s death in 1645. (26) It was said that William had died in possession of a capital messuage in Knockyn Street containing a brewhouse, a malthouse, and many rooms which were part of the premises. Fittings included one mill wheel; a pair of millstones; a furnace; a mash (for mixing malt with hot mater to make wort), fat (a large vessel or cask) and sweetwort tun (a large cask or barrel for infusing the malt before hops are added); a vessel for smallwort; five ‘coolers’ (a vessel used for cooling the wort); one ‘gill tun’ in the storehouse; eight ‘stillings’ (stands for casks) and two tables in the hall; one cupboard, a drawing table and a ‘court’ cupboard in the parlour; a bedstead, table, and court cupboard in the chamber over the hall; a bedstead and two little tables in the parlour next the malthouse; a table, two bedsteads and a press in the chamber over the parlour; a bedstead and little table in the cockloft; a dresser board and a dish board in the kitchen; six ‘stillings’ in the ground cellars; a pair of ‘wallowers’ (perhaps trundles for moving barrels); a pair of stones and a mill chest in the mill; a bedstead and a little table in the room beyond the parlour; and a drawing table and a court cupboard in the chamber over the parlour. (27)

The architectural survey of Rowley House, however, has doubted whether the present building contained the malthouse, ‘unless it simply contained the drying floors and storage bins for the raw materials and was attached to a separate kiln or kilns. However, the evidence indicates that it was a well-lit and well-ventilated structure, factors that would not have been conducive to grain storage or brewing processes.’ Instead, it has been suggested, the building may have functioned as a warehouse for Rowley’s cloth business. (28) But if Rowley’s House was not the ‘very vast great brewhouse’ mentioned in 1635, or a part of it, it is difficult to see from either the documentary evidence, the original plot lay-out of this area as shown e.g. on the detailed 1882 Ordnance Survey map, or the photographic record of surrounding buildings taken at the time of the 1930s clearances, where else it could have stood. Moreover, if Rowley’s House incorporated a cloth warehouse it was not, significantly, mentioned among the property left by William Rowley in 1645. Nor have similar warehouses – of such prodigious size – been noted elsewhere in Shrewsbury, whether in the pictorial or documentary record, although several drapers in the early 17th century were at least if not more prominent in the Welsh cloth trade as Rowley. (29) Still, the issue as to the original purpose of Rowley’s House is clearly a difficult one given the changes in its use over the last 400 years, e.g. for residential use (which appears in fact to have involved the insertion of many windows in the elevation), and even as an oil works for the Morris company of Shrewsbury which would certainly have required good ventilation. In addition, the restoration of 1932 was radical and incorporated salvaged materials from demolished buildings nearby. (30)

William Rowley was one of the great wholesale or ‘common’ brewers of early 17th century Shrewsbury. (31) The growth of this trade had been assisted both by the rise of beer brewing using hops, which encouraged economies of scale, and by the great increase from the mid-16th century in the number of alehouses. In Shrewsbury and its liberties their number increased from about 70 in the 1560s to about 220 in the 1630s. Although many alehouse-keepers brewed their own ale or beer, production was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few wholesalers, a trend supported by the corporation which in 1601 attempted to suppress (not with great effect) the small producers, or ‘pan-brewers’, although innkeepers were permitted to brew if they wished. By 1636 five wholesale brewers served the town, William Rowley included. The scale of his business is sometimes revealed in the town records. In January 1622 for example he was said to have made deliveries to two unlicensed alehouse-keepers – six barrels since All Hallowstide (1 November) to Widow Grennowe, and two barrels since Christmas to Robert Tench. (32) Later, between 1 November and 23 December 1635 he delivered three barrels of ale to the cooper Edmund Worley, and three barrels to the tailor Daniel Bolas between Michaelmas and the first week of January 1636, at 13s. a barrel. (33) By 1621 the streeters of Romaldesham (Barker Street) were complaining of the noise made by Rowley’s carts which were also said to be breaking up the road surface – a sign, perhaps, of heavy brewery traffic. In addition he was said to have damaged the postern gate at Cripplelode and obstructed the passage-way there. Perhaps worse, his dogs barked incessantly at night. His pint bushel, examined with other brewers’ measures that year, was also found to be too small. (34)

In 1915 the local historian H.E. Forrest speculated that the original Rowley seat at Worfield, with its malthouse, provided the malt (perhaps more accurately, some of the malt) that was taken up the river Severn in trows and brewed into ale at the Rowley premises in Shrewsbury. (35) That is plausible since malt was certainly transported up-river to the town, (36) and there is good evidence that William remained in close personal and business contact with the Worfield branch of his family. In 1598 he was married at Worfield to Alice, daughter of John King of Birmingham, and their youngest daughter Anna was also baptized there in 1605, while the Worfield registers refer to servants of William Rowley in 1635-6 and 1642, hinting at business connections. William himself made a benefaction of £50 to the poor of Worfield parish for the distribution of bread, and his own maternal grandfather William King died at Shrewsbury in 1635 while staying at Rowley’s house. (37) From the late-1630s William Rowley’s brother-in-law, also called William King, operated another important brewhouse at St. Julian’s Friars, in the old Franciscan Friary buildings, and during the Civil War he became a trustee for the Rowley brewhouse in Knockyn Street on the other side of town. (38)

Unlike in other towns, the brewers and maltsters of Shrewsbury did not become a significant political interest – perhaps because of the predominance of the town’s drapers – and common brewers were even barred from election to the town council in 1657. (39) That, however, was some years after William Rowley had died in 1645, and during his own lifetime he was elected one of the town bailiffs for the year 1628-9, and was included on the new town council, as an alderman, after it had been doubled in size in 1638. The significance of his civic career lies mainly in the fact that he was a staunch member of the town’s godly or ‘puritan’ party. Although the size of this party cannot be judged precisely – it almost certainly did not represent majority opinion in Shrewsbury – by the 1620s the town had become a ‘centre in a network of puritan ministers and laymen which stretched from Cheshire through Shropshire and Herefordshire and into Warwickshire’. (40) In Shrewsbury the group was knit together by Julines Hering who since 1617 had held a lectureship at St. Alkmund’s church (Rowley had been closely involved in securing his services). This lectureship had been endowed by Rowland Heylyn, a London merchant with local links, who was later to become one of the controversial Feoffees (Trustees) for the Purchase of Impropriations in London, who aimed to buy up church livings which were in the hands of laymen, and insert godly ministers. Although provided for in slightly different circumstances, Hering was the kind of minister the Feoffees would have had in mind. Of impeccable godly credentials he was ‘the genuine radical puritan article’, and a man often in trouble with his diocesan authority over his reluctance to conform to the required ceremonies of the Church of England, as they were then (uneasily) settled. (41) The picture that emerges from the surviving evidence is of a close-knit, godly community, including some of Shrewsbury’s leading citizens, gathered under their mentor Hering to listen to his sermons, and to dine, pray and to discuss together. Keen observants of the Sabbath, they were, as the local annalist had described their predecessors in 1592, ‘the perfect protestants’ of Shrewsbury. (42)

William Rowley was a key member of this community. (43) He was a regular correspondent, for example, of Sir Robert Harley of Brampton Bryan, the leading puritan among the gentry of North Herefordshire, and was also remembered years later in his memoirs by the well-known Shropshire non-conformist Richard Baxter as ‘my very dear friend William Rowley’. (44) In 1641 Rowley had lent Baxter some books on the government of the church and on the controversy about the proper position of the altar, which helped to convince Baxter of the corrupt nature of the diocesan system. In the 1620s and 1630s Rowley’s name also often crops up in the visitation records of his diocese. With his fellow draper George Wright (bailiff 1619-20, 1632-3) he was consistently presented for a variety of non-conformist offences. In 1620 he was presented for not receiving communion at Easter; in 1626, along with a group which included the future separatists and levellers Daniel and Katherine Chidley, for not ‘frequenting’ his parish church; and in 1633, along with Wright and his wife and others, for not bowing at the name of Jesus and refusing to communicate ‘for the gesture’s sake.’ (45) The visitation records suggest that Rowley’s religious inclination was shared by his family circle. Those presented in 1626 for not attending St. Chad’s church included not only Rowley’s wife but William King, then aged nearly 80, and so identifiable with Rowley’s maternal grandfather; while a group presented in 1633 for the same offence at St. Julian’s church also included a William King, probably Rowley’s brother-in-law, another brewer (see above). (46) William himself gave several of his younger sons Old Testament names – Jonathan, Seth, Gideon, Joseph and Benjamin, yet the baptisms of none of his children appear in the register of their native parish of St. Chad’s.

Several of the presentments of Rowley and his family were brought by Peter Studley, since 1622 curate of St. Chad’s and the leading anti-puritan in Shrewsbury. In 1626 he was to name William Rowley and George Wright as two who ‘do admit the people of diverse families into their houses to hear the sermons repeated, to sing psalms and prayer, most Sunday nights in the year.’ This was an accurate enough description. A later sympathetic account of Hering’s ministry describes how he used to preach at St. Alkmund’s church every Tuesday morning and again on the Sabbath at 1 o’clock, taking care, it was claimed, not to preach when services were being held in other churches. The Sabbath sermon would then be repeated at night before supper at the homes, in rotation, of Edward Jones (the lawyer who lived at Jones’s Mansion, Dogpole), George Wright, and William Rowley. (47) Clearly Hering had significant support in the town, and like John Tomkys and other public preachers in the town before him, he was also let the Drapers’ Hall for his residence (since December 1618). (48) At this period too, prior to the 1630s, the bishop and diocesan authorities were more inclined to allow the puritan outlook some space beneath the umbrella of the church.

Rowley’s own bailiffship in 1628-9 hints at hostility to what, in his eyes, must have seemed to be ungodly recreations. In summer on 5 July 1629, a Sabbath day, an evening’s entertainment in a private house (Mr. Mytton’s hall, i.e. Vaughan’s Hall) (49) was arranged by Ozias Lloyd, an apprentice baker. He and some of his fellows, his sister Elizabeth and some of her girl friends, met ‘to be merry for an hour or two, and to eat sillibowkes [sillabubs] and green cheese’. There were three musicians and there was dancing from 5 to 8 at night. Most of the party had left when bailiff Rowley came knocking on the door. Although a friend got away, Ozias himself was arrested. Under examination it was revealed that though it was the Sabbath he had not attended church at any time during the day, having missed the morning prayers at six, the morning service at nine, and the morning and afternoon sermons. (50) On another occasion, at mid-night on a Saturday, Rowley broke up a party of bargeman who were enjoying themselves to the sound of a taber and pipe on a trow tied up at Frankwell quay. The musician John Davyes was arrested and thrown into the Stone Gate gaol (on the English Bridge) where he ‘remained in great misery having no bed to lie upon but the bare floor.’ He was released on petition and a promise to leave off playing his instrument. (51) Given that Rowley was one of the biggest brewers in the town, it would be easy to accuse him of a conflict of interest. His business even supplied the beer for the Shearmen’s company for their annual festival. (52) But if Rowley had any qualms, there is no evidence of it.

When Ozias Lloyd was arrested, he refused to make the formal submission that normally brought such incidents to a close, but said he would prefer to stay in prison until Rowley’s fellow bailiff Richard Gibbons, who was out of town, had come back. Gibbons had married into the Catholic (and recusant) Sandford family of Rossall, in the borough liberties, and his brother Francis was not only vicar of Holy Cross parish from 1611 until 1640, but became a chaplain to Charles I. (53) And whereas at the onset of Civil War a few years later Rowley was said to be an opponent of the King, Gibbons was a staunch supporter, both men suffering for their respective loyalties. One can infer, therefore, that even in 1629 Lloyd was attempting to play the two bailiffs off against each other, and to exploit their ideological differences. Such differences were to become much more visible in the town during the 1630s when the altered climate under Charles I’s personal rule, and the ecclesiastical policy associated with Archbishop Laud, allowed the anti-puritans in the town greater rein. (54) Peter Studley in particular was to use the celebrated murder in 1633 of his brother and mother by Enoch ap Evan, a deranged farmer’s son from Clun in the south-west of Shropshire, to launch a fierce attack on the local puritans, whose self-preening pieties, and dubious Calvinist theology, were alleged to have contributed to Enoch’s desperate act. And in the course of that decade a number of disputes in Shrewsbury involving school appointments, Studley’s own replacement as curate of St. Chad’s in 1636, and negotiations over a new borough charter in 1637-8, were all connected in some measure to the religious divide in the town. In c. 1638 Rowley himself was abused on the town council as a puritan. (55) It was in this period too, after his endowment had been taken away, that Julines Hering was obliged, by 1635, to leave Shrewsbury, becoming in due course minister to the English congregation in Amsterdam. Later in May 1642 Rowley was one of those who hoped that Hering could be brought back to take over the living of St. Alkmund’s, which had fallen vacant: ‘it will be glorious’, he wrote to Sir Robert Harley, ‘that the banished (little less it was) be recalled’.

The year 1642, however, and the onset of civil war, were to prove disastrous for Rowley. After the King had come with his army to Shrewsbury in September, Rowley was named as one of 13 members of the town council who were ‘persons disaffected to his Majesty’s person and government’, and who were to be barred from council meetings until they cleared themselves. (56) Described as a beer brewer, he was then also put on a list of Shrewsbury ‘delinquents’. (57) Rowley was to die in the summer of 1645, and was buried at St. Chad’s on 2 July, so he did at least live long enough to witness the capture of the town by the parliamentary forces in February 1645. A family dispute in Chancery ten years later shows that he had died in debt in the substantial sum of £4,000, about half of that sum representing a mortgage taken out in 1631 to his fellow-draper and non-conformist George Wright. (58) His personal estate, however, was worth only £3,000, having been much wasted it was claimed through plunder, free quarter (i.e. for the royalist soldiery), and other expenses. After a consultation between two of Rowley’s sons, the eldest Roger (III) and Jonathan, it was agreed that there was no chance of paying off the debt unless brewing was resumed, and that Jonathan as a trained brewer was the man to do it. In return Roger agreed to pay him an annual maintenance of £200 and to allow Jonathan to hold the premises for the rest of his life. The whole estate was then put in trust. When Jonathan died unmarried in August 1655 (he was an alderman and had served as mayor in 1653-4) most of his father’s debts had been paid off, although his younger brother Benjamin, also a brewer by trade who had worked in partnership with his brother, together with his uncle William King, tried unsuccessfully to claim an interest in the estate. (59) A glimpse of Jonathan’s time at the brewhouse is provided in 1651 when one of his servants is recorded to have met his death‘by being scalded in Mr. Rowley’s brew house´. (60) Doubtless he had fallen into one of the vats, an occupational hazard recorded in Shrewsbury records from medieval times. In 1653 two tanners were also presented for dipping limed calf-skins into the Severn near Jonathan’s pump, thus polluting the water for the brewery. (61)

The ultimate fate of the Rowley estate is known only in outline. (62) Jonathan’s interest in the brewhouse ended with his death in 1655 and returned to his elder brother Roger, a barrister (hence the need for his brother to run the brewing business), and said to have been the first man in Shrewsbury to keep a coach. His legal career would presumably have entailed finding another working partner, or tenant, to take over the brewhouse, just as Jonathan had in 1645. The obvious choice would have been Benjamin Rowley, but as already noted he fell out with his elder brother over the estate, and in any case died in 1663. Roger died in 1670 and was succeeded by two married daughters. The eldest Priscilla had married John Hill about 1658, and it was she who inherited most of the Shrewsbury estate. The other, Anne, wife of Richard Shalcrosse, inherited the property at Rowley near Bridgnorth (sold in 1684). (63) Priscilla’s husband John Hill came from the Hill family of Court of Hill (ancestors of the Hills of Hawkstone). He was reputed to have provided liberal hospitality at Rowley’s Mansion, and in due course to have had the street in which his house stood named after him. However, on this point existing accounts are probably confused. John Hill, ‘senior’, Priscilla’s husband, died in 1680 and was described in his will as a merchant of Shrewsbury. He was succeeded by his son John Hill, ‘junior’, and it was the latter who was elected to the town council in 1677, served as mayor in 1688-9, and was probably the generous host who gave his name to the street. (64) He is said to have been the model of one of the judges in George Farquhar’s play ‘The Recruiting Officer’, written c. 1705-05 when Farquhar was resident in the town.

John Hill (junior) died in 1731 and was buried at St. Chad’s. He had children by different marriages, but it was the two daughters by his first marriage, Priscilla, wife of Philip Thomas, and Mary, wife of Thomas Youde, who inherited the Shrewsbury property, and whose descendants still held shares in the early 19th century. The Mansion, it is said, passed to Priscilla, but neither she nor her husband resided there as the house was almost immediately rented out to the Rev. Dr. Thomas Adams, vicar of St. Chad’s, who occupied it until 1775 when he resigned his living. Dr. Adams was a life-long friend of Dr. Johnson who visited him at Rowley’s Mansion in September 1774 en route to North Wales. Thereafter the Mansion had no tenants of consequence and, though still said to be in good condition in 1808, began a slow process of decay. Its mutilated condition is visible in photographs of the early 1930s as clearance of the surrounding area began. In the intervening years it had been used at different times as a woollen manufactory and a bark warehouse. (65) Surprisingly, given the fact that it must once have been one of the largest breweries in any county town in England, the fate of the adjoining brewhouse concern (whatever its connection to Rowley’s House) is unknown. Its demise, if such it was, would need also to be considered in relation to the general development of the brewing industry. There is no shortage of records (national, borough and parochial) that could help to answer this question.

A final detail relating to the owners of Rowley’s Mansion may be mentioned. The Rev. Hugh Owen wrote in the early 19th century that ‘William Rowley appears also to have embarked in the settlement of Barbadoes, a favourite speculation with the commercial men of his time, and is related to have planted Rowley’s Islands in the Caribbees.’ (66) No evidence for this statement has been found, nor can I find ‘Rowley’s Islands’ on the modern atlas. There is, however, undoubtedly a Rowley connection with Barbados. In 1661 one of William’s sons, Seth Rowley, was one of 17 ‘planters, merchants and traders to Barbadoes’ in London who petitioned the King that the then governor of the island should be retained in office. (67) Seth died in 1668, though by that date he was living in Shrewsbury. His will makes no reference to Barbados – at that very period being converted into a veritable sugar gold-mine (68) – but he did make his ‘loving friend’ John Hill, merchant of London, one of his executors (his eldest brother Roger was the other). (69) This man, it seems likely, was John Hill senior, who married Seth’s niece and subsequently acquired through his wife the Rowley Mansion/House estate in Shrewsbury (above). And Hill’s will of 1680 shows that he did indeed have lands in Barbados which he left to his son John Hill, junior. (70) The son’s will of 1731 in turn shows that he was at that time owner of 3/7ths of a plantation in Barbados, in the parishes of St. John and St. Joseph, then under the management of a John Rous. A life interest in the plantation was left to Hill’s daughter Ann, and after her decease to his son John and heirs. (71) Thus while it cannot be shown that William Rowley himself was implicated in the Atlantic slave economy, one of his sons, and his son-in-law, who indeed had married Seth’s only daughter and heir Alice, certainly were. John Hill junior’s liberal life-style, one may infer, was therefore derived from the profits of sugar and the slave trade which underpinned it. (72) And the fact that one of the streets of Shrewsbury is named after him is one of those awkward facts of English provincial topography that have become more evident in recent years. It is also evidence of how about the middle of the 17th century Shrewsbury developed intriguing connections not only with the island of Barbados, but elsewhere in the New World – a subject touched upon in more detail in the note on George Cleeve of the Sextry, and of the Pheasant, Mardol Head.

Sources
1 Richard K. Morriss, Paul Stamper, A Structural Survey and Documentary History of Rowley’s House and Mansion, Shrewsbury (hereafter Survey), Shropshire Archaeology Service, report no. 69 (1995), 6. Much of the documentary evidence for this report was provided by myself (Bill Champion), and where appropriate I have extended that evidence to provide more depth to the account given here.
2 Its windows and brick bonding indicate a date around the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. Although it could have been part of the eventual Rowley estate, which was extensive, it cannot be shown to have been built by William.
3 William was a fuller and his son, also William, was admitted to the Shrewsbury Drapers’ company in 1576: Transactions Shropshire Archaeological Society [T.S.A.S.] 4th ser. xi. (1927-8), 143.
4 Survey, 1, based on the account by H.E. Forrest. ‘The Rowley Family’, Trans. Caradoc and Severn Valley Field Club, vi. (1915-16), 170-7.
5 For Rowley’s admission to the Drapers’ company, see T.S.A.S. 4th ser. xi (1927-8), 147.
6 Shropshire Archives [SA] 3365/1842, box 3.
7 T.S.A.S. 3rd ser. v. (1905), 131; SA 3365/1842, box 1, no. 3 (suit list 1525). Thomas was a member of the Tailors’ and Skinners’ company and is named in the 1524-5 subsidies as alternatively Thomas Brewer/Cherwell: M.A. Faraday, The Lay Subsidy for Shropshire 1524-7, Shropshire Record Series, vol. 3 (1999), nos. 11, 330. Described as a brewer, he was presented for throwing muck into the drain in Knockyn Street in 1537-8: SA 3365/1024/2/9-10.
8 National Archives [NA] Req 2/406/83. That is, Rowley had lent Cherwell money, perhaps secured on the brewing business.
9 T.C. Mendenhall, The Shrewsbury Drapers and the Welsh Wool Trade in the XVI and XVII Centuries (1953), 49-50, 92-4. The use of the word ‘wool’ in the title of this book has often misled. It was not raw wool but woven cloth that most Shrewsbury drapers dealt in.
10 NA CP 25(2)/343/10 Jas. I/Trin.
11 T.S.A.S. liii (1949-50), 222, 233; Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 106r; Bodl. Lib. MS Gough Shropshire, fo. 53r.
12 Survey, 4; M. Peele, Shrewsbury Drapers’ Properties, TS, no date, SA D.36.1 v.f., p. 4. This Drapers’ property, said in any case in 1668 to lie beside the house where Mr. Rowley lived, passed out of the holding of the Rowley family when William’s original lease lapsed in that year. It cannot therefore relate to the Rowley’s Mansion/House complex – a possibility raised in Survey, 5.
13 Survey, 4-5.
14 T.S.A.S. liii (1949-50), 222, 233; Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 106r.
15 Bodl. Lib. MS Gough Shrop. 6, fos. 52v-53r. The property was ultimately held of the borough, and can therefore be traced in the borough rentals.
16 Survey, 67.
17 Ibid. 67-8.
18 Richard Cherwell himself had purchased seven messuages and ten gardens in Shrewsbury in 1594-5, and most if not all of this property presumably came to William Rowley: NA CP 25(2)/203/36-7 Eliz./Mich., CP 25(2)/203/37 Eliz./Easter.
19 Survey, 5, 68.
20 SA 3365/1198/34.
21 Survey, 7, 56.
22 In 1674 William Rowley’s grandson John Hill (senior) paid an encroachment fine for a porch in the back way which led from ‘Rambshams Street’ (Barker Street) to his house in Knockyn Street. i.e. Rowley’s Mansion: Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 114r. This back way must be the narrow covered passage between two cottages which led from Barker Street past the New Ship Inn premises to emerge beneath the stair tower of Rowley’s House. From there (the back yard of the New Ship) one could then continue to Knockyn Street via another covered passage adjoining Rowley’s Mansion. See Survey, 6, and OS 1882 edn.
23 SA 3365/1237; Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 106r.
24 Chetham Society, Old Series, i. (1844), 186.
25 Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 106r.
26 NA C78/678/2. For the following, see Survey, 4-5.
27 Survey, 4-5.
28 Ibid. 50, 68.
29 The analogy made (Survey, 50) with the so-called Fellmongers’ Hall in Frankwell is not apposite. Rowley traded in cloth, not raw wool.
30 Survey, 6-8, 44, 51.
31 For this paragraph, see the outline history of Shrewsbury 1542-1638.
32 SA 3365/1205/2/130.47.
33 SA 3365/1237.
34 SA 3365/1205. Much similar evidence will no doubt be found when the borough archives are properly conserved and made accessible.
35 Forrest, ‘Rowley Family’, 170, 177.
36 E.g. in 1607 at Shrewsbury the trowman Uriah Horton contracted to transport to the town eight loads of barley malt from Tewkesbury, and six loads from Worcester: SA 3365/1920/229.
37 Forrest, ib. 172.
38 NA C7/421/7, C8/47/75, C8/71/74, C8/106/34, C8/122/20, C78/678/2.
39 T.S.A.S. xi. (1888), 185.
40 P. Lake, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and a Shropshire axe-murder’, Midland History, xv. (1990), 48. The following notes on Rowley’s religious persuasion are based on this article and that of Barbara Coulton, ‘Rivalry and religion: the borough of Shrewsbury in the early Stuart period’, Midland History, xxviii. (2003). Both articles provide the detailed religious background not given here.
41 Coulton, ib. 32; Lake, ib. 47-8.
42 T.S.A.S. iii. (1880), 324.
43 Other members of this community, though younger than William Rowley, have also been studied: see B. Coulton, ‘Humphrey Mackworth: puritan, republican, Cromwellian’, Cromwelliana (1999); id. ‘Thomas Hunt of Shrewsbury and Boreatton’, Transactions Shropshire Archaeological and History Society, lxxiv. (1999).
44 For this paragraph, see Lake, ‘Puritanism’, 47. Richard Baxter was a direct descendant of the Shrewsbury draper John Baxter (bailiff on four occasions between 1463 and 1486): T.S.A.S. 3rd ser. iii. (1903), 382; Rev. H. Owen, Rev. J.B. Blakeway, A History of Shrewsbury (2 vols. 1825), ii. 204 05, n. 3. By coincidence – it cannot be more than that – John Baxter had in the 15th century held the same tenement in Knockyn Street, possibly the brewhouse site, that later passed to the Cherwells and then to William Rowley: see note 11.
45 Ibid.
46 Lichfield R.O., B/V/1/48, B/V/1/53. Also presented in St. Chad’s in 1626 were Thomas King ‘gent’, and his wife.
47 Coulton, ‘Rivalry and religion’, 34.
48 SA 1831/6, fo. 29r.
49 Vaughan’s Hall was a Mytton possession.
50 Coulton, ib. 36; Somerset, Records of Early English Drama. Shropshire, i. 316-17.
51 J. Alan Somerset, Records of Early English Drama. Shropshire, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1994), i. 317.
52 Ibid. 301, 306.
53 T.S.A.S. xlvii. (1933-4), 195-6; Lichfield R.O. B/V/1/29, 60.
54 For the rest of this paragraph, see the sources given in n. 41.
55 SA 3365/2236.
56 Owen and Blakeway, History of Shrewsbury, i. 431.
57 T. Bracher, R. Emmett, Shropshire in the Civil War (2000), 21.
58 NA C78/678/2.
59 NA C78/671/21.
60 Forrest, ‘The Rowley Family’, 173.
61 SA 3365/1300.
62 For the next two paragraphs, see [Rev. H. Owen], Some Account of the Ancient and Present State of Shrewsbury (1808), 537-9; Forrest, ‘The Rowley Family’, 172-5; SA 6001/2792, pp. 2387-2399 (Rowley pedigree).
63 Through his wife Shalcrosse did acquire some property in Shrewsbury on Corvisor’s Row (Pride Hill): Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 103r; Bodl. Lib. Gough Shrop. 6, fo. 48r (boro. rentals).
64 The first known references to Hill’s Lane date from the late 1690s: M. Gelling, The Place-Names of Shropshire. Part IV (2004), 26.
65 Survey, 5-6; Owen, Some Account, 539. Bark was used in the tanning trade.
66 Owen, ib. 538.
67 Cal. State Papers, Colonial, 1661-1668, 14.
68 H. Thomas, The Slave Trade. The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 (1997), 187-8.
69 NA Prob 11/327, 70 Hone.
70 NA Prob 11/364, 126 Bath.
71 NA Prob 11/644, 122 Isham.
72 A hint of his comfortable standard of living is given by some of the legacies to his daughter Ann, including a little picture set in gold, some silver dressing plate (though this had belonged to her mother), and ‘my chariot and mares’ (coach and horses): ibid.