"In depth" Richard Prynce (c1520 - 1598) of Whitehall Abbey Foregate

Whitehall, Monkmoor Road, Shrewsbury (image) [+]
Prynce's Mansion built 1578-82 for Richard Prynce, lawyer.

Whitehall, set originally beside the open fields of the Abbey Foregate suburb, was built between 1578 and 1582 by the lawyer Richard Prynce (d. 1598).(1) On its completion it made an immediate impression – a ‘famous house’ as a contemporary chronicler described it. The house, originally of bare red sandstone, takes its name from the fact that by the 1800s it had been covered for many years in whitewash, since gone (2). Architecturally it is of some interest as it represents the first native adoption in England of a house with a double-pile plan, i.e. as Eric Mercer has put it: ‘a square or rectangular block, two rooms thick, with a symmetrical main façade in one plane . . . with a hall, entered directly from outside through a central doorway and reserved for the ‘quality’; and with service rooms out of sight and with their own separate and unseen entrances.’ It is unlikely, however, that Prynce set out on purpose to create a new fashion. The house reflected rather ‘the circumstances of its builder: a man, despite his social advancement, outside of the general milieu of landed society, and residing as close to his occupation as he could.’(3)

What were those circumstances? In 1589 Prynce described himself as an old man ‘far above three score years’, suggesting that he was probably born about the early or mid 1520s.(4) He was the son of a Shrewsbury shoemaker John Prynce who had originally lived in Dogpole, but by 1527 had moved across the river to the Abbey Foregate, then a separate jurisdiction.(5) But John’s origins were not necessarily modest: the term shoemaker at this date could include leather-dealers, and in due course he was to become an important resident of the Abbey Foregate. In 1535, for example, he acquired the lease of the demesne tithes of Betton Abbots, which had belonged to Shrewsbury Abbey, and at the abbey’s dissolution he also obtained a lease of the hospital of St. Giles in the Abbey Foregate, the endowments of which he appears to have appropriated by 1546 when he styled himself as keeper and guardian.(6) In addition he also purchased from the speculators in the ex-abbey properties two houses beside the abbey church (in one of which he lived), and two shops on the Stone (English) Bridge.(7)

John Prynce died in 1557, by which time his son had already embarked on a legal career, taking on his first case as an attorney in the Shrewsbury Small Court (which dealt with civil litigation) about 1547, and continuing to practise there until 1551, in which year he was admitted a burgess of Shrewsbury described as literatus, which it has been suggested implies not so much ‘scholar’ but a self-educated man.(8) Richard appears to have begun his career as a clerk to the lawyer John Aylesbury who from 1533 to 1540 had also practised intermittently in the Small Court.(9) In 1534 Aylesbury described himself as a notary public, before whom (for example) appraisors of inventories were sworn;(10) but unlike most of the other attorneys attached to the Small Court, who at this date were typically also local craftsmen, Aylesbury had some formal legal training – he had once attended New Inn in London, a subsidiary institution of the Inns of Court.(11) He was a fairly substantial figure in Shrewsbury, and it may have been through his influence that Prynce set his sights higher and in due course began to practise as a counsellor at the bar of the Court of the Council in the Marches in Ludlow. (In Prynce’s time the distinction between attorney and counsellor was not quite the same as that which in England – until only recently – existed between solicitor and barrister. For one thing a Tudor counsellor could also engage in conveyancing, and some of Prynce’s fortune was made that way.) It was undoubtedly through his connection to the Council in the Marches that Prynce was also elected M.P. for Ludlow in 1558 and for Bridgnorth in 1559 – he was clearly an up-and-coming man.

Yet Prynce had no formal legal training, and it was no doubt to rectify this omission that in 1554 he was admitted to the Inner Temple, one of the Inns of Court in London, by special licence – probably because he was so much older than the other students. That his talent was already recognized is suggested by the fact that one of his sponsors was William Leighton of Plaish Hall, member of one of the leading county families. Despite his studies in London Richard maintained his Shropshire links, as his elections as M.P. shows, and it was during this time in 1558 that he also served as one of the arbitrators in the dispute between the tailor William Langley and the abbey church parishioners. Langley had purchased the abbey after its dissolution and had then begun to strip the roof off the nave, but the arbitrators awarded in the parish’s favour. In fact Prynce’s work for the parish had already been recognized five years earlier when, in return for his hard work on their behalf, the parishioners granted him a 60-year lease of the two chambers above the north porch of the abbey church. At that time he was living in the ‘East’ Foregate, which suggests that he was not then residing in his father’s old house in the ‘West’ Foregate, opposite the abbey buildings.(12)

Prynce, however, never completed his legal studies in London. Instead in 1560, before being called to the bar, he was persuaded to return to Shrewsbury to take over the town clerkship, the legal competence of the previous clerk having been castigated by the town’s Recorder (the chief legal advisor on civil litigation).(13) On his return in February 1561 Prynce was entertained by the town bailiffs at the Sextry tavern (in Golden Cross Passage).(14) Although he served as town clerk for only a short period (he had resigned by August 1562 when a successor was appointed),(15) it was from this time that Prynce built up a large and successful practice. In 1562 he was also appointed feodary for Shropshire, i.e. responsible for collecting the Crown’s revenues from the profits of wardship. In due course he took out a grant of arms in 1584 and established his family among the principal gentry of the county. Prynce’s first marriage, in 1574, had been to Margaret, daughter of William Proude of Sutton whose family owned the mills there. (William’s cousin George Proude, a draper, built Proude’s Mansion in Milk Street about 1568 though it was later altered, and with Prynce bought half of Cantlop manor near Condover in 1571.(16) ) But when Margaret died childless in 1584, Prynce cemented his links to the county gentry by marrying Dorothy, daughter of William Leighton of Plaish Hall, who was also to serve as one his executors. Much younger than her husband – she outlived him by almost 40 years – Dorothy was to provide the male heirs that Prynce badly needed.

The fact that Prynce was never called to the bar at one of the Inns of Court was to be a fact of some moment in the history of the legal profession. Before the 1540s being called to the bar did not confer a public degree or qualification to practise as a counsellor: it was merely a ceremony which marked a stage in a student’s participation in the academic life of the inn. It was quite possible to practise otherwise, as Prynce did at Ludlow, provided one could show oneself to be ‘learned in the law’. For various reasons that situation changed thereafter, and by 1570 it was understood that practising advocates must have been called to the bar – to have become an ‘utter barrister’, so-called. As a result Prynce was placed in an awkward position. In practice, however, his career was safeguarded: on three occasions, the last in 1586, he was given permission or special licence, in recognition of his good service, to continue as an advocate at the Ludlow bar. Nonetheless, in 1589 his lack of formal qualifications again became an issue, on this occasion in a law-suit, and the resulting case, Broughton v Prynce, or ‘Prynce’s case’ as it was later known in the law reports, though never decided, came to be understood as definitively establishing that no counsellor could practise without first being called to the bar. In a small way then, Richard Prynce left his mark on the history of the English legal profession.

Prynce owed his success not only to obvious native ability, but to contemporary conditions that were especially favourable to those with legal talent. Largely due to the growth of population and of inland trade after 1540, there was an explosive increase in litigation in the century that followed. In the Shrewsbury Small Court, for example, the number of law-suits roughly trebled in that period,(17) and at the same time an active market in land, assisted by the release of so much ex-monastic land onto the market, provided rich pickings for expert conveyancers. In addition there were the normal opportunities for providing general legal advice. Prynce’s advice or assistance, for instance, was sought by Shrewsbury corporation (who from 1565 paid him a small retainer) about felons, charitable bequests, idle and drunken persons, and how to reply to a letter in 1584 from the Council in the Marches about Sir Walter Raleigh’s voyage to America.(18) He also acted as counsel to the parishioners of St. Mary’s when their ownership of the parish lands was challenged in 1572,(19) and was often consulted on legal matters by other bodies, for example the Shrewsbury Mercers company.(20) Not everyone, however, warmed to him, and one contemporary complained that Prynce ‘hath been wholly addicted to suits and brabbles all his life time’.(21)

Certainly Prynce was in an ideal position to monitor the local land market, and from the 1560s he built up a large estate of his own, principally to the west of Shrewsbury, including a lease of the valuable Chirbury tithes,(22) although he also had property in the Abbey Foregate.(23) Among the more significant of his purchases was a portion of Hogstow Forest as well as other lands near Habberley, which by the 18th century made up an important part of the orefield of the Shropshire lead mining industry.(24) And it was here that Prynce’s ultimate descendants, the Earls of Tankerville, were to enjoy revenues from the Tankerville, Pennerley, East Roman Gravels, Batholes and Roundhill mines near Shelve.(25) In the 1620s it was said that in the 11 years after his death in 1598, and the coming of age of his eldest son Francis, Richard Prynce’s landed estate had brought in over £9,000, or about £850 a year.(26) That sum of course excluded Prynce’s professional income, but if correct would have been sufficient to place him, outside the peerage, in the richest ranks of the English gentry.

Prynce’s acquisitiveness was indeed to involve him in much litigation. In one incident in 1585, having taken out a lease of some of the Quarry ground – part of the town commons and at that time usually known as the ‘pasture behind the walls’ – he instructed his farm-hands to drive off the grazing cows and to plough and sow the ground with barley, contrary to the established claims of the commoners. Enraged by this act, the sons of the burgesses came out and drove off Prynce’s hands by pelting them with clods of earth. The county justices then ordered that the issue be tried at common law.(27) Quarrels also arose with Prynce’s neighbours in the Abbey Foregate. Here, after Shrewsbury Abbey had been dissolved in 1540, a number of families had come to prominence, most of whom had benefited from the sale of monastic property in Shropshire. As well as Prynce, the names of Langley, Rocke, Hatton, Mackworth, Ireland, Poyner and Barker were all represented. Relations between these, at times, covetous and status-conscious families were not always good. A case in point involved the manor of the Abbey Foregate which was not sold by the Crown until 1578. Prynce had secretly spent time in London enquiring as to its sale, and at the right time had quietly gone to London to arrange the purchase. His neighbours Richard Rocke and Thomas Hatton got wind of this, hastily rode down to London, and confronted Prynce in person. They were worried that Prynce, having bought the manor, might question their leases, being a man as they put it, ‘much given to search into other men’s titles.’ The three men then agreed to divide the manor between them. Later Prynce’s was later bought out, though not without much rancour and further litigation.(28)

Shortly after in 1580 Prynce fell out more seriously with Hatton, an irascible bully who may have lived at Hatton’s Mansion near the present site of the Column. The dispute was over an acre field called Old Yard near Hatton’s house, the possession of which was claimed by both men. When Prynce sent in his farm hands to plough it up, Hatton burst into Prynce’s study to demand what was going on. Then, after returning home he gathered some relations and servants together, chased the ploughman off the field, pulled out the pin from the plough and removed the plough tail. Prynce himself then appeared on the scene, waving his horn-tipped walking cane, and the parties swapped insults. When both Hatton’s wife and daughter-in-law, Lucy Nash, offered Prynce a drink to calm him down, he called them ‘queen’ and ‘bawd’, and threw Lucy to the ground. The ensuing brawl, watched by a large crowd, then had to be broken up by the parish constables.(29) Relations between Prynce and another neighbour George Ireland, brother of the merchant Robert Ireland of Ireland’s Mansion in the High Street, were also bad. In 1586 the Ireland brothers, together with Richard Barker of Abbey Foregate, were alleged to have assaulted Prynce in the suburb, forcing him to seek safety in a widow’s house.(30) Three years later Prynce and Robert Ireland were to come to blows again in another unseemly incident (see the link to Ireland’s Mansion).

‘Master Prynce’s house or place’ – effectively a country rather than a town house – could hardly but stand out in its vicinity. As such it was a tempting target for thieves. Almost as soon as it had been completed in March 1582 a plan to burgle it was discovered, involving a former servant of Prynce’s and the parish clerk. The ex-servant was also discovered to have counterfeit coinage in his possession, a capital felony, and both men were hanged on Kingsland for their crimes.(31) Ten years later, on the night of 27 November 1592, the counting house was broken into and a small sum of money stolen. The thieves also found keys giving access to many of the important rooms in the house; but before they could take advantage they were frightened off by noises, and crept away to a nearby cottage where they had left their horses. But the horses had slipped their tethers and could not be found in the dark. Leaving the keys behind, the burglars then made off by foot. Next morning both keys and horses were found, the latter grazing in the adjoining fields. The horses were then taken to Shrewsbury and adjacent places to be displayed to see if anyone could recognize them and identify their owners.(32)

Richard Prynce died in 1598. His was a classic case of the immense rewards available during this period to the best lawyers, examples being found over much of England. Closer to home, Thomas Owen, of Condover Hall and the Council, was one such example, as too Nicholas Gibbons of Gibbons’s Mansion on Wyle Cop. Richard’s fortune then descended to his eldest son Francis, and it was in 1601, while Francis was still a minor, that his trustees bought the estate in the Abbey Foregate which had once belonged to the guild of St. Winifred, whose shrine had been located in the abbey church.(33) The lands included the Gay, the large riverside meadow on part of which in the future, from 1914, the ground of Shrewsbury Town Football Club was developed.(34)

Francis Prynce (1588-1615) came of age in 1609 and immediately set out on a life of legendary profligacy. Knighted by James I in 1611, Sir Francis was the subject of a host of stories. On one occasion he challenged Sir Edward Mountford to a duel at the Bridgnorth Assizes (who ignored him); on another he rode through Mr. Langley’s corn in the Abbey Foregate crying out, ‘The King doth ride over men’s corn on hunting and so may and will I, for am I not a Prince?’; and on a third he was sitting down to dinner with some of his Leighton relations at Wattlesborough Hall when his pocket pistol, which had been handed over to the butler, went off. The pellets hit one of the staff in the head, fortunately without fatal injury. His pretensions were despised by some of his neighbours. Once, having challenged Peter Langley to a horse race down the Abbey Foregate, starting from Hatton’s Mansion, Francis then cheated, provoking Langley to shout that he was a base counterfeit knight, a liar, and now so hated in the vicinity that ‘he durst not come home unto his house but by stealth at night.’

The archetypal drone, living off unearned income, Francis was to die unexpectedly in 1615, only six years after coming into his inheritance. (There was a local story that he had been killed in a duel, but no proof of this has been found.) By that date he had already mortgaged or sold off much of his estate, and the task of restoring the family fortunes was left to his younger brother, Richard junior (1589-1665). Like his father, Richard, who at some point in his life lost an eye,(36)36 was a hard-working barrister, with a mean business streak.(37) Appointed sheriff of Shropshire in 1627, knighted in 1632, and made mayor of Shrewsbury in 1662, it was he who restored the family patrimony to its former grandeur, a fact commemorated on the large and florid monument to him in the abbey church. Yet even at death his elder brother’s dissolute legacy lived on, and in his will of 1665 Richard left money to pay off the bills that Francis had run up with his London tradesmen all those years ago.(38)

Sources
1 ‘Early Chronicles of Shrewsbury’, Transactions Shropshire Archaeological Society [T.S.A.S.] iii.
(1880), 290.
2 [Rev. H. Owen], Some Account Of The Ancient And Present State Of Shrewsbury (1808), 518.
3 Eric Mercer, English Architecture to 1900: The Shropshire Experience (2003), 146-7.
4 National Archives [NA] STAC 5/P42/6.
5 Unless otherwise stated or corrected, details of Richard Prynce’s family are taken from H.E. Forrest’s
MS history of the family, Shropshire Archives [SA] 224/6, and Forrest’s ‘Wills of the Prynce Family,
T.S.A.S. 4th ser. viii.
(1920-1). For Prynce’s career, see Hist. Parl. Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 253-4; and in particular J.H.
Baker, ‘Solicitors and the Law of Maintenance’, in Baker, The Legal Profession and the Common
Law (1986), 129-135. John Prynce was of Dogpole in 1525, SA 3365/1842, box 1 (no.3); and of
Abbey Foregate by 1527, SA 3365/1793 (1527-8, contemp. fo. 64r).
6 V.C.H. Shropshire, ii. 106; viii. 25.
7 Rev. H. Owen, Rev. J.B. Blakeway, A History of Shrewsbury (2 vols. London, 1825), ii. 141, n. 2.
8 Baker, ib. 129.
9 Baker, ib., quoting a law suit of 1563, thought that Prynce became clerk to Aylesbury only after
leaving the Inner Temple about 1560, but the reference to Prynce’s clerkship is in fact to an earlier
date. His initials, and those of Aylesbury, as practicing attorneys in the Shrewsbury Small Court,
which dealt with civil litigation, can be found in the court books and among pleading bundles.
Aylesbury sued his erstwhile clerk in 1548 for breach of covenant, which suggests that Prynce’s
departure from his service may not have been amicable: SA 3365/1796 (1547-8, contemp. fo. 16r).
10 Lichfield R.O, will and inventory of Adam Broughton, proved 22 Oct. 1534.
11 NA CP 40/1145, m. 267.
12 SA 6000/1970-1; P250/B/24/22.
13 SA 3365/76, fos. 41r, 42v; 3365/1847 (letter of John Throckmorton, 18 May 1560).
14 T.S.A.S. 3rd ser. vii. (1907), 330.
15 SA 3365/76, fo. 53r.
16 SA 6000/6605, 6706.
17 W.A. Champion, ‘Litigation in the Boroughs: The Shrewsbury Curia Parva, 1480-1730’, Journal of
Legal History, 15 (1994).
18 SA 3365/486, fos. 71r, 109v; SA 3365/64, fo. 130r; Hist. Parl. Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 253.
19 Owen & Blakeway, ii. 351.
20 SA 6001/4260, fos. 30v, 32v, 118v, 124r, 125v, 141v-142r, 147.
21 NA STAC 5/P43/19 (Prynce v Hayle, answer of John Hayle, c. 1593).
22 SA 6000/2501 (1577).
23 His estate is laid out in the Inquisition Post Mortem taken in 1598: NA C142/252/41.
24 Calendar Patent Rolls, 1578-1580, 229.
25 SA 460/1, 1709/6; F. Brook, M. Allbutt, The Shropshire Lead Mines (1973), 14.
26 NA C3/372/11.
27 T.S.A.S. iii. (1880), 302.
28 NA C2/Eliz1/P2/59, C2/Eliz1/A1/38.
29 NA STAC 5/P29/23, STAC 5/P32/18.
30 NA STAC 5/P42/6.
31 T.S.A.S. iii. (1880), 290.
32 T.S.A.S. iii. (1880), 325.
33 SA 1514/454.
34 SA 3465/xxv/4.
35 NA STAC 8/199/12
36 SA 3365/2237 (articles brought against Katherine Tomkies, 1639).
37 Sir Richard was prosecuted in 1635 for engrossing grain: Huntington Lib. (California), Ellesmere
MS 7579.
38 H.E. Forrest, ‘Wills of the Prynce Family’, T.S.A.S. 4th ser. viii. (1920-1), 127.