Richard le Strange, MP

Family and Education b. by 1526, 2nd s. of Sir Thomas Lestrange and bro. of Sir Nicholas. m. Dorothy Astley, 1s.

Offices Held

?Minor duchy of Lancaster official bef. 1547; freeman, King’s Lynn 1562; ?mayor of Waterford 1581-2, 1588-9.

Biography Lestrange was one of the earliest supporters of Queen Mary in Norfolk. He was no doubt brought into Parliament by his brother’s master the 4th Duke of Norfolk, but he was well known at King’s Lynn. His seat at Hunstanton was some ten miles away, and he received a lease from the corporation of the ‘site and precinct’ of the Grey Friars there only six weeks before he was elected, the lease to be void if he lived outside the town for ‘a year together’. He purchased the freedom of the borough just before his election on 29 December, being styled ‘esquire, merchant’ in the register.

Some time after 1563 Lestrange went to Ireland, where the treasurer, and later lord deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam II, was his relative. He may have been the ‘Richard Strange’ who wrote to Burghley in October 1581 asking that Thomas Fenner of Shoreham should be allowed to ship 150 tons of wheat from England for the relief of distress in Waterford. Both Lestrange and Fenner sat for Sussex boroughs in Elizabeth’s reign.

There are a few other references to Richard Lestrange or Strange in the Irish State Papers for 1581-9, concerning Waterford and county Kilkenny. In April 1587 he was one of four ‘lords, gentlemen and freeholders’ of Kilkenny who asked the lord deputy and Irish council to be allowed to compound ‘for her Majesty’s charges’, and at the end of 1589 he signed a petition from one of the FitzEdmund family for a pension or fee farm. No later information has been found about him. His descendants afterwards settled at Castle Strange, co. Roscommon, and bought Moystown in King’s County.

Vis. Norf. (Norf. and Norwich Arch. Soc.), i. 64; Somerville, Duchy, i. 460; CSP Ire. 1574-85, pp. 322, 341, 378; 1586-8, p. 293; 1588-92, pp. 121, 126, 221, 226, 287; APC, iv. 432; King’s Lynn congregation bk. 1544-69, ff. 324, 325, 385, 386, 395; Lynn Freemen, 104; Burke, Hist. Commoners, iv. 641.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603 Author: N. M. Fuidge

• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jul 19 2016, 21:30:00 UTC
• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Oct 5 2016, 2:46:47 UTC