Family and Education

s. of Thomas Oxborough of Beckham Well. educ. L. Inn 1572, called 1581. m. (1) Thomasine, da. of Thomas Heward of Oxborough, 4s. 3da.; (2) Margaret, da. of Richard Slyford of Slyford, Lincs., wid. of Patrick Cartwright of King’s Lynn.

Offices Held

Town clerk of King’s Lynn 1584-97, recorder from 1597; j.p. Norf. from c.1596; commr. sewers for Ely ?1594, Lincs. and Norf. by 1597.

Biography

Most of our information about Oxborough comes from the records of King’s Lynn. He received a number of payments for his work on the town’s behalf. In April 1585 he was given £5, ‘towards such charges as he shall be at for the town this next term for such matters and causes as he is appointed to have to do for the town’. In July 1590 he was paid £10 for his ‘great pains’ about the borough’s business, and in September 1592 received £3 6s.8d. for his part in discussion between Lynn and the ‘Cambridgemen’. The town also showed its appreciation in other ways. In 1594 and 1599 he was granted leases of lands and houses in Lynn, and in January 1601 was given part of a hogshead of wine.1

Oxborough received burgess money on each of the occasions, during the Elizabethan period, on which he represented Lynn in Parliament. He was paid £13 6s.8d. for the 1586 Parliament and £6 for the Parliament of 1601. The amount for the 1597 Parliament is unknown, as he received his burgess money and a debt which the town owed him in a lump sum of £25. On 3 Dec. 1597 he was named to a committee for a bill for the draining of the fens. The burgesses for King’s Lynn were appointed to committees in 1597 concerning the bishop of Norwich’s possessions on 30 Nov. and the Exeter merchants on 12 Dec. He was also a commissioner for sewers, interested in land reclamation, as the Privy Council registers show.2

Oxborough died on 30 Dec. 1623. He left his lands in King’s Lynn, Tilney, Middleton, Terrington St. Johns, and Islington to his children and grandchildren. His second wife, Margaret, received land in Lynn and a life interest in her husband’s mansion house in the town.3

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: A.G.R.S.

Notes

• 1. Vis. Norf. (Norf. and Norwich Arch. Soc.), i. 150; Vis. Norf. (Harl. Soc. xxxii), 211; Vis. Norf. 1664 (Norf. Rec. Soc. v), 152; PCC 3 Byrde; SP12/Case F/11; APC, xxvii. f. 274; Lansd. 76, f. 130; King’s Lynn congregation bks. 1569-91, ff. 289, 297, 409; 1591-1611, ff. 17, 42, 130, 183, 216.
• 2. King’s Lynn congregation bks. 1569-91, f. 368; 1591-1611, ff. 223, 254; Townshend, Hist. Colls. 111; D’Ewes, 565, 567, 571; APC, xxvii. 274-6; 1613-14, 265-7.
• 3. C142/406/26; PCC 3 Byrde.