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TROWELL, Richard, of Derby.
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Biography Detail
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Family and Education
m. bef. 1390, Hawise.1
Offices Held
Bailiff, Derby Mich. 1399-1400.2
Biography
The Trowells, who derived their name from a hamlet situated midway between Derby and Nottingham, acquired property in the ‘vicus faborum’ in Derby itself, and by the early 14th century had set up in business as producers of woollen cloth. Among their number were an MP of 1320 and a bailiff of 1344-5. Richard was perhaps one of the sons of John Trowell†, the parliamentary burgess of 1362.3 In 1370 he and his brother, John, a mercer and possibly the MP of the following year, combined in the purchase of a messuage and several acres of land in Derby. Four years later Richard served on a local jury. He used the pretext of his first return to Parliament to secure, with the assistance of Richard II’s confessor, Thomas Russhok, a royal pardon for having, in February 1378, accidentally caused the death of one Robert Wynall. Another pardon, which he took out in January 1385, removed the sentence of outlawry imposed on him in the court of common pleas for failing to appear to answer charges of debt brought by the parson of Gotham, Nottinghamshire. On the same day he went surety in Chancery for another burgess.4
In 1390 Trowell sold four messuages and some land in Derby and Chaddesden to William Groos*, but he retained other properties, including, for term of his life, three houses, the reversionary interest in which was to be granted in 1392 to St. Mary’s priory by members of the Tuchet family in association with William Pakeman*. Trowell is last heard of in 1400, when he and his fellow bailiff were appointed by the sheriff to be custodians of the chattels forfeited by Ralph Stathum, a Derbyshire man who had supported the earl of Huntingdon in his rebellion against the new King.5
