Family and Education

b. c.1517, yr. s. of Sir Henry Long^† of Draycot Cerne by his 2nd w. Eleanor, da. of Richard Wrottesley of Wrottesley, Staffs.; bro. of Robert^†. m. a da. of one Bacon, at least 1s.

Offices Held

Servant of 5th and 6th Earls of Shrewsbury by 1560; freeman, Lymington by 1574, mayor 1588-9, 1596-7.

Biography

As Newcastle-under-Lyme was a borough within the duchy of Lancaster, Long’s patron for his parliamentary seat in 1563 was presumably Sir Ambrose Cave, chancellor of the duchy. Long’s connexion, through his mother, with the elder branch of the Dudleys may have commended him to Cave. At Shaftesbury the patron would have been the and Earl of Pembroke, with whom there was a marriage connexion through Long’s brother Edmund having married a daughter of Nicholas Snell, the 1st Earl’s steward. Long is not mentioned in the extant journals of either of his Parliaments and he did not sit again during the remainder of his long life. He made his will, ‘feeble of body and diseased with infirmities’, on 9 July 1600, commending his soul to ‘the Father that made me, the Son that redeemed me and the Holy Ghost that comforteth me’, and asking to be buried at Lymington. The will was proved on 11 June 1602.2

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: P. W. Hasler

Notes

• 1. De Tabley and Browne Willis disagree over the name of the Member for Shaftesbury in 1571, the former giving Thomas Laige, and the latter John Long. Even taking de Tabley’s Laige to be a mistake for Long, the only suitable Wiltshire Thomas Long sat for Westbury in this Parliament; therefore it seems likely that on this occasion Browne Willis is correct.
• 2. VCH Hants. iv. 647; Harl. 888, f. 20; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. vi(2) (1903), pp. 244, 256; Vis. Hants. (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 118; E. King, Old Times Revisited, 32, 219, 223, 290; Lymington Recs. 16; HMC Shrewsbury and Talbot, ii. 326, 355; VCH Wilts. V. 116; PCC 17 Ketchyn, 43 Montague.