LECHE, James (by 1518-54), of Newtown, Mont.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1518, s. of James Leche of Newtown by da. of Sir Robert Stonefield of Carden, Cheshire. m. Elizabeth (?illegit.) da. of Sir Thomas Leighton of Wattlesborough, Salop, 1s. 2da. suc. fa. by 1518.1

Offices Held

Receiver, Newtown in 1541; ?j.p. Salop 1538-9, 1543; j.p.q. Mont. 1543; sheriff 1543-4; commr. subsidy 1546, relief 1550.2

Biography

The son of an esquire of the body to Henry VII, James Leche was described as ‘of the new town of Cydewain’ in one of the two chancery cases in which he was engaged in the period 1538-44. He was almost certainly the Shropshire justice of the peace of his name, for he married into that shire, but is to be distinguished from a namesake of Llawhaden, Pembrokeshire, who was both an esquire of the body and had Shropshire connexions. One of the original justices for Montgomeryshire, the shire’s first Member and its fourth sheriff (an office he was discharging during the third session of the Parliament), Leche made little mark in the closing years of his life. The request contained in his will of 30 Dec. 1553 that he should be buried with Catholic rites wherever he should chance to die suggests that he was about to undertake a journey, and it was in London that he died between then and the following 21 Feb., when the will was proved. One of his daughters married successively Charles Price and Andrew Vavasour of Newtown.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: P. S. Edwards

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from fa.’s death, C1/452/40. Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxix), 324; Vis. Cheshire (ibid. lix), 138; W. V. Lloyd, Sheriffs, Mont. 55; PCC 26 Tashe.
  • 2. Lloyd, 56; LP Hen. VIII, xiii, xiv; C193/12/1; E179/222/344, 353, 355; CPR, 1553, p. 363.
  • 3. C1/1022/27, 1023/30; LP Hen. VIII, x, xiii; Augmentations (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. xiii), 164; PCC 26 Tashe.