MICHELL, Richard (by 1522-60/70), of Melcombe Regis, Dorset.

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

Constituency

Dates

Apr. 1554

Family and Education

b. by 1522.1

Offices Held

Mayor, Melcombe Regis 1543-4.2

Biography

At the musters held on 15 May 1539 Richard Michell, described as an archer, appeared among others from Melcombe Regis with armour, a bill, a bow and a sheaf of arrows. By trade he was a merchant shipping goods from Poole in the early 1540s and from Lyme Regis in the following decade. In 1545 and again in 1550 he was charged in Melcombe for the payment of a subsidy and a relief, on the first occasion assessed at £20 in goods, on the second at £10. In October 1553 he was one of the Melcombe men who paid an instalment towards Owen Reynolds’s parliamentary wages. Michell probably owed his Membership to his kinsman Henry Michell’s friendship with Richard Phelips who sponsored his own son Thomas for the borough to the next Parliament. The Journal does not mention Michell. He was still trading from Lyme during 1558-9 and he was named a feoffee for Hugh Smith in 1560, but he was dead by 1570 when a list of all the surviving former mayors of Melcombe and Weymouth was compiled.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from municipal office.
  • 2. Weymouth and Melcombe Regis mss Sherren pprs. 10.
  • 3. Ibid. Sherren pprs. 16; SP2/S; E179/104/156, 195.