Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

This Member came of a well-known Droitwich family, and was presumably related to the George Newport who represented the borough in two Marian Parliaments. Their Droitwich residence was classified by the seventeenth-century antiquary Habington among the ‘fair houses’ of the town, ‘most eminent, mounted apart on the south, and overlooking all the rest’, and by Elizabeth’s reign they owned also the Worcestershire manor of Hanley William. Their position seems to have come directly from the salt industry. During Edward VI’s reign John Newport, a former bailiff of Droitwich, leased the tithe of salt for the town at an annual payment of £7 and 32 bushels of white salt. The only reference to Newport himself in the local records is in the salt tax accounts for 1566-7, which describe him as owning a ‘phate’, a measure containing over 216 vessels of salt water. This was the burgess qualification at Droitwich. No will has been found either at Worcester or London.

Vis. Worcs. (Harl. Soc. xxvii), 156; Habington’s Worcs. (Worcs. Hist. Soc.) ii. 64, 295; J. Noake, Monastery and Cath. of Worcester, 504; Worcs. RO, bulk accession 1006, bdle. 32, no. 433.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Notes