MORRANTE, Edmund (?d.1593), ?of Rye, Suss. and /or St. Sepulchre's, London.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

This Member has not been identified. He may have belonged to the Kent family of that name, seated at Morants Court at Chevening: they owned one of the manors in Romney Marsh, and four times in the mid-fourteenth century represented the county in Parliament. The family does not appear in the heralds’ visitations of the Elizabethan period. The 1571 MP may have been the man who was paid, in 1572, a 40s. fee owing to him for unspecified services to the Cinque Ports. The fee was paid through Rye, and may indicate that he lived there. This was a usual fee for sixteenth century boroughs to pay their legal counsel, and it may, therefore, indicate Morrante’s occupation, though his name has not been traced in the inns of court registers. One of this name, of the parish of St. Sepulchre, was about 1589 assessed on £30 in fees for a London subsidy. Administration of this man’s property was granted to his son Thomas, with the consent of Jane, the widow, on 13 May 1593.

Since William Eppes, his co-Member in 1571, was a local man, Morrante, whoever he was, may have been nominated by the lord warden.

M. T. Derville, Level and Liberty of Romney Marsh, 110; Arch. Cant. xxi. 208-9; Cinque Ports black bk. f. 3; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. cix, cx), 160; PCC admon. act bk. 1593, f. 58.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes