Reginald Corbet

[1] He enjoyed great wealth, partly because his wife was an heiress of Sir Rowland Hill, the first Protestant Lord Mayor of London.

However, of the three brothers, only Roger was provided for when Sir Robert died on 11 April 1513: aged about 12, he was to undergo a long wardship before coming into full possession of the Corbet estates in 1522.

Alice was a niece of Sir Rowland Hill[5] of Soulton, an official of the Worshipful Company of Mercers who had made immense wealth from the trade with the Netherlands.

[6] Hill was the first Protestant Lord Mayor of London, coordinator of the Geneva Bible translation and a possible inspiration for 'Old Sir Rowland' in Shakespeare's As You Like It.

Honorific and lucrative appointments continued through Corbet's life, initially in Shropshire, then in other counties in the Marches and Wales, irrespective of the religious complexion of the regime.

Under Queen Mary's Catholic regime, he was appointed to the Quarter Sessions of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, Cheshire, Monmouthshire, and the Welsh counties.

Toward the end of Mary's reign, on 6 April 1558, Corbet was made a justice of the Court of Great Sessions in Wales for the Northern Circuit, which consisted of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire.

In her final months, Mary approved Corbet's call as serjeant-at-law, although the appointment was not confirmed until April 1559, when Elizabeth's Protestant regime was firmly in control.

[8] The breadth of Much Wenlock's franchise is obscure, but local gentry interests, like the Blounts, Corbets and Lacons, seem to have played a large part in the election, and the Diocese of Lichfield had also tried to exercise influence.

[9] Corbet was returned as first member, together with John Evans, a staunch Catholic from Wales, who had been appointed clerk to the borough in the previous year.

Nothing is known about Corbet's part in it, except that he successfully requested leave of absence in its last month to serve as Lent reader at the Middle Temple.

John Dudley, First Duke of Northumberland was the power in the land and he was particularly zealous in securing the return of his supporters to that parliament,[1] although it is unclear why he would want to block the election of Corbet, who seems to have been broadly sympathetic to the Protestant faction.

Among Corbet's contemporaries, fellow Salopian Robert Broke was recorder and MP for London,[11] where the practice seems to have originated, while Richard Morgan occupied both offices for Gloucester,[12] another important borough in the Marches.

Corbet's is not one of the 60 names later marked as "they which stood for the true religion" in that parliament:[13] these were the decided Protestants who resisted Mary's restoration of Catholicism from the outset.