Sir Thomas Wroth (1584 – 11 July 1672) was an English gentleman-poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1628 and 1660.G. Yerby and P. Hunneyball, 'Wrothe, Sir Thomas (1584–1672), of Petherton Park, Som.', in A. Thrush and J.P Ferris, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604–1629 (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Read here Active in colonial enterprises in North America, he became a strong republican in the Rump Parliament but stopped short of regicide.
Origins and education Thomas Wroth was born in London, the eldest son of Thomas Wroth (died 1610) of the Inner Temple and of Blendon Hall, Bexley, KentE. Hasted, 'Bexley', The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, Vol. 2 (Canterbury, 1797), pp. 162–183, at p. 170. (British History Online accessed 8 June 2016). Sometimes misquoted as 'Blundon Hall, Boxley'. and his wife Joanna Bulman, daughter of Thomas Bulman of London.W. Berry, County Genealogies: Pedigrees of the Families in the County of Sussex (Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, London 1830), p. 361. The parents were married at St. Stephen Coleman Street on 23 December 1577 and Thomas was christened there on 5 May 1584.Yerby and Hunneyball, 'Wrothe, Sir Thomas', History of Parliament online. St Stephen Coleman Street, Composite register, 1598–1636, P69/STE1/A/002/MS04449, Item 001 (London Metropolitan Archives). A grandson of Sir Thomas Wroth (1516–1573) and Mary Rich,The marriage is shown in W.C. Metcalfe, The Visitations of Essex in 1552, 1558, 1570, 1612 and 1634; to which are added miscellaneous Essex pedigrees, (etc)., Part 1, Harleian Society, Vol. XIII (London 1878), p. 276–77. Also in R. Hovenden (ed.), The Visitation of Kent taken in the years 1619–1621 by John Philipot (&c.), Harleian Society, Vol. XLII (1898), Additional Pedigrees: De Haut, pp. 212–14, at p. 214. daughter of Richard, Lord Rich, Thomas was cousin-German to Sir Robert Wroth of Loughton, Essex (1575–1614), who in 1604 married Mary Sidney (Lady Wroth), daughter of Robert Sidney, Baron Sidney of Penshurst, afterwards Lord Viscount Lisle and 1st Earl of Leicester. His father was cousin to Robert Rich, 3rd Baron Rich (1559–1619), who was created 1st Earl of Warwick in 1618.
Thomas matriculated as a commoner at Gloucester Hall, University of Oxford, on 1 July 1600, but was later associated with Broadgates Hall. He left the university without a degree. He was "in good esteem among some persons for his poetry, for his encouragement of poets, and for his love to learning and learned men."A. à Wood, ed. P. Bliss, Athenae Oxonienses, New Edition (Rivington etc., London 1817), III pp. 514–16. His contemporary, the poet Richard Niccols (who entered Magdalen College, Oxford in 1602, and took his B.A. at Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1606), dedicated his juvenile work 'The Cuckow'The Cuckow. At, etiam cubat cuculus: surge amator, i domum. Richardus Niccols, in Artibus Bac. Oxon. Aulae Mag. (Felix Kingston & William Cotton, London 1607) 4to. to 'his worshipful good friend Master Thomas Wroth, an affecter and favourer of the Muses' in 1607, addressing him as 'dear friend' and 'Patron',Richardus Niccols, The Cuckow, at University of Oxford Text Creation Partnership. and promising better thereafter:When as my wit with riper fruit shall growMy muse may speak to thee in sweeter rymeAnd for thy worth some graver poem show.T. Park (comp. & ed.), Contents of the Harleian Miscellany, New Edition, Vol X, 2nd Supplementary Volume, (White and Cochrane/John Murray, London 1813), pp. 1–11, at p. 2. In November 1606 Thomas was entered with his brother Peter Wroth as a student at the Inner Temple. Date 'Alumni Oxonienses, 1500–1714: Woodall-Wyvill', Alumni Oxonienses 1500–1714 (1891), pp. 1674–1697. accessed: 09 May 2012
Inheritance, marriage and poetry Thomas Wroth was knighted at Theobalds on 14 October 1613,Thus in DNB. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, gives 11 October 1613. and, having inherited a considerable portion of his father's wealth, he purchased the Somerset estates of his cousin Sir Robert Wroth when they were sold for the payment of debts. The chief of these were the manors of Newton and Petherton Park, of which his great-grandfather Robert had been appointed Forester by Henry VII,J. Collinson, The History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, 3 Vols (Dilly, Robinson, Longman & Payne, London/Fletcher, Oxford 1791), III, pp. 62-69. and which his grandfather Sir Thomas had purchased from Edward VI in 1550.A.P. Baggs and M.C. Siraut, 'North Petherton: Manors and other estates', in R.W. Dunning and C.R. Elrington, A History of the County of Somerset Vol. 6, Andersfield, Cannington, and North Petherton Hundreds (Bridgwater and Neighbouring Parishes), (London, 1992), pp. 283-300 and pp. 300-306. (British History Online accessed 8 June 2016). Petherton Park became the seat of his branch of the family, and for the rest of his life Wroth was associated with Somerset politics, while conducting his London affairs from Coleman Street.
In c. 1614In 1635 the marriage had lasted 21 years, see Wroth's Encomium listed below. Wroth married his widowed cousin Margaret Rich (c. 1580–1635), to whom he became very devoted. She was a daughter of Richard Rich (d. 1598) (acknowledged son of Chancellor Rich) and his wife Jane Machell.Jane Machell (a daughter of John Machell, Sheriff of London 1555–56) married 'Richard Riches' at St Mary Aldermary, City of London on 13 December 1574. J.L. Chester, The Parish Registers of St Mary Aldermary, Harleian Society, Registers Vol. V (London 1880), p. 5. In 1598 Margaret and her brother Nathaniel were with their mother at their father's deathbed at Leigh, Essex, attended by William Noyes, then 'minister of this place'.Will of Richard Rich of Leigh, gentleman, Essex Record Office D/ABW 32/91. Margaret was first married to Paul Bowdler, citizen and Draper of London (d. 1610),Will of Paul Bowdler, Merchant of London (P.C.C. 1611). two of whose sisters, Judith and Anne, were the wives of Sir William Calley of Burderop, Chiseldon, Wiltshire, and Sir John Gore of London, respectively.'The Society's MSS. Chiseldon, etc. (continued)', Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine No. XCIV, Vol. XXXI (Devizes, December 1900), pp. 173-79. Her daughter Anne Bowdler, who died in her maidenhood in 1629, came of this marriage.Will of Anne Bowdler of London (P.C.C. 1629).
Wroth composed and published The Husband: a poem expressed in a Compleat Man at the time of his marriage:Sir Thomas Wroth, The Husband: a poem expressed in a Compleat Man (London: Printed for Lawrence Lisle, 1614). Richard Niccols included an epigram (no. 29) to Dame Margaret, in fourteen lines of rhymed couplets, in his small 1614 collection Vertue's Encomium:(Richard Niccols), Vertue's Encomium: or, The Image of Honour. Honor Virtutis Praemium (London, printed by William Stansby, 1614), in T. Park (comp. & ed.), Contents of the Harleian Miscellany, New Edition, Vol X, 2nd Supplementary Volume, (White and Cochrane/John Murray, London 1813), pp. 1-11, at p. 10. It has been mistakenly referred to as her epitaph. 'Margarite', the gem, the pearl and the daisy, is extolled with play on the words 'rich' and 'worth'. Over the next five years Wroth prepared his rhymed English translation of Book 2 of Virgil's Aeneid (with parallel Latin text), as The Destruction of Troy. This was published, with 100 epigrams of his own Abortive of an Idle Hour, in 1620.Sir T. Wrothe, The Destruction of Troy: or the Acts of Æneas, translated out of the Second Booke of the Æneads of Virgill ... With the Latine verse on the one side, and the English verse on the other ... as also a Centurie of Epigrams and a Motto upon the Creede (Printed by T.D(awson) and are to be sold by Nicholas Bourne, London 1620). 10 sheets in quarto. It was dedicated to Robert Sidney, Lord Viscount Lisle,P. Bliss (ed.), Athenae Oxonienses and The Fasti by Anthony a Wood, New Edition Vol. III (Rivington, &c., London 1817), pp. 514-15. father of Lady Mary Wroth. Sidney had some part in the poem's genesis, and the epigrams include one (no. 26) dedicated to Captain Nathaniel Butler, Governor of Bermuda. Wroth's Destruction of Troy, in which he resolved into prophecy the words of Creusa's apparition, may be read as a Virginian text for the colonial culture carrying its religion to a new western land, its prophetic mission under the direction of providence.S. Brammall, 'The Spectre of Creusa: Prophetic Closure in Sir Thomas Wroth's Destruction of Troy,' in The English Aeneid: Translations of Virgil, 1555–1646 (Edinburgh University Press 2015), pp. 118-125.
Company interests and entry to parliament A marriage of Rich and Wroth families reinforced their interconnected histories of Protestant sympathy and Puritan patronage. Wroth had been a subscriber to the Virginia Company in 1609. His brother-in-law, Margaret's brother, was the colonial pioneer Sir Nathaniel Rich, and like Robert Sidney a most active figure in the Virginia Company. Wroth fully associated himself with them in colonial enterprise. In 1620 he became a member of the Company of the Somers Isles (Bermuda Company), and on 3 November 1620 joined the Plymouth Council for New England, being named in the New England Charter.'The Charter of New England 1620' (text) at The Avalon Project. He became a member of the Virginia Company in 1621,E.D. Neill, History of the Virginia Company of London (Joel Munsell, Albany, New York 1869), p. 151. and from 1621 to 1624 was particularly associated with Nathaniel Rich and Robert Sidney in the Warwick party of the company, when they came into opposition to Sir Edwin Sandys.W. Stith, The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia (William Parks, Williamsburg 1747), Book IV, pp. 186 ff. He voted in favour of the surrender of the original charter in October 1623,Neill, History of the Virginia Company, p. 414. S.M. Kingsbury (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London Vol. IV: Records II (Library of Congress, Washington 1935), pp. 80, 290-91. and was one of those included in James I's new grant of 15 July 1624.'Commission for settling a government in Virginia', in Kingsbury, Records of the Virginia Company, IV, pp. 490-97, at p. 494. He was also a member of the Eastland Company. Wroth was a J.P. for Somerset from 1624 to 1625. In domestic politics he joined the opposition to King Charles I: in 1628 he was elected Member of Parliament for Bridgwater and sat until 1629, when Charles began to rule without parliament for eleven years.
Suspicion, loss and aspiration