William Webbe, MP

Family and Education 2nd s. of William Webbe† and bro. of John. m. Katherine (b.1537), da. and h. of George Tourney or Turney of Motcombe and Gillingham, Dorset, 2s. 3da.

Offices Held

One of the 24, Salisbury by Apr. 1559, auditor 1559, mayor 1561-2; j.p.q. Dorset from c.1579.

Biography Unlike his elder brother, Webbe asked the chamber of Salisbury to pay him expenses amounting to £10 of the £12 8s. owing to him for representing the city in the Parliament of 1559; he lay ‘long sick at London at that time’. He may have left Salisbury soon afterwards to live on his wife’s Dorset property. He inherited five Hampshire manors from his father as well as property in Salisbury, to which he added between 1559 and 1574 estates at Wilton and elsewhere in Wiltshire. His own will mentions extensive holdings on the Somerset-Wiltshire border. Despite the status this land might be thought to confer, in 1562 his wife was presented before the Salisbury justices for wearing apparel unsuitable to her social position. Webbe died on 15 Apr. 1585 leaving a number of charitable bequests, but a de bonis non grant was made on the estate in July 1587.

Hoare, Wilts. Chalk 29, Cawden, 20; City of Salisbury mss leger 1452-1567, ff. 321, 322, 324; Lansd. 35, f. 132; PCC 26 Tashe, 36 Brudenell; C142/211/189; Wards 7/21/224; Wilts. N. and Q. iv. 212; v. 177; vi. 150, 406; vii. 98, 416; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxii. 308.

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