Family and Education

b. by 1537. m. 27 Dec. 1567, Anne (d. by 1574), wid. of Roger Hecsynbury.1

Offices Held

Biography

In the Southwark subsidy roll of 1576 Robert Freeman’s goods were assessed at £20, and he was required to equip two light horsemen for the musters. He lived in the parish of St. Saviour, and was married in the church to the widow of a wool supplier who had died worth £200. Freeman’s name does not appear on a later list of about 1593, nor on the surviving lists before the accession of Elizabeth. The absence of his name before 1558 suggests that Freeman did not live in Southwark until about the time of his first election there.2

He may have been the son of another Robert Freeman of Southwark who lived in the parish of St. Olave, and whose will was proved in 1538. This namesake was a man of small means: he left 1s. for tithes forgotten, 4d. to altars in the church, a ‘workaday single gown’, and a mazer; his wife Elizabeth, his sole executrix, was to have the residue of all his goods. The Member was a dyer of cloth, but he may also have been involved in the leather trade for which Southwark was an important market; a visitation of London taken in the 1630s records that a member of the Mercers’ Company had married the daughter of ‘Robert Freeman of London, leather seller’.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: A. D.K. Hawkyard

Notes

• 1. Presumably of age at election. Greater London RO, P92/SAV/357; Req.2/136/26, 157/481, 291/29.
• 2. PRO, T/S of subsidy roll of 2nd payment of lay subsidy granted 18 Eliz. f. 128; Surr. Arch. Colls. xviii, 179; Req.2/291/29.
• 3. Surr. archdeaconry wills 45 Pykman; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xvii), ii. 352; VCH Surr. ii. 329; Req.2/157/481.