OLD LOUGHTON HALL. 1 7 



repairs, exclusive of seventy timber trees to be had on the Manor, is 

 set down at ^loo. "The consideracion of all which premisses," 

 add the commissioners, " wee doe referre to yo"" wisdomes." 



What was done in consequence of this report remains doubtful 

 But some time afterwards we find the Lady Mary Wroth, Sir 

 Robert's daughter-in-law, in an undated letter^ addressed to Anne, 

 the Queen of James I., beseeching Her Majesty to recommend to the 

 king Mr. Wroth's petition for a new lease. The request was evidently, 

 in some sort, a repetition of that addressed by his father, old Sir 

 Robert, to Michael Hickes ; for, in the course of her letter, the Lady 

 Mary alludes to the house as being old and in decay, and like 

 every day to fall down, and promises that her husband will make it 

 his chief dwelling-place and fit for Their Majesties. He is also 

 willing to pay ;^6oo as a fine, or to spend that sum upon the build- 

 ing; and to lose ;^roo a year by letting the deer feed in his best 

 grounds, to which, by his lease, he is not bound. And, as a 

 further inducement to the Queen, who was clearly her very good 

 friend,^" the writer humbly beseeches Her Majesty's furtherance in the 

 business, on the ground that it will be much for the petitioner's 

 good, "Mr. Wroth having promised to add itt to my jointure, all 

 the rest of his lands beinge entailed." The result of the negotia- 

 tions was the grant, in 1609, of a new lease," to run for forty-one 

 years from 1644, when a former one, granted in May, 1579, to John 

 Stonerd, and then vested in Sir Robert Wroth (he was knighted in 

 1603), would expire. For this renewal the lessee paid ;^iS4, by 

 way of a fine, and bound himself to maintain in good condition all 

 thatched buildings, hedges, ditches, and enclosures, the annual rent 

 being, as in the time of the last Abbot of Waltham, ^£46 — a suffi- 

 ciently good bargain, it would seem, for the fortunate lessee. 



Some three years later, a fresh survey^'- of the manor was ordered 

 to be made, on the ground that the Manor of Loughton had " not 

 been of long time exactly survaied, by reason whereof divers rents, 

 services, and boundaries, were concealed, detayned, and sup- 

 pressed"; and the sheriff was instructed to provide a jury. The 

 survey was accordingly made on June 30th, 161 2, and the first 

 paragraph of it runs as follows : — 



9 Lord Salisbury's MSS. (Hatfield House) : Cecil Papers, \^. 



10 Nichols (c/. cit), iii., 541, names her as attending the Queen's funeral later on ; and also 

 (ii.. 756) states that the king stood sponsor to her son, by his deputy, the Earl of Pembroke. 



11 D. of Lane. : Counterpart Leases ; Class xv.. No. 28. 



12 D. of Lane. : Surveys and Depositions (10 Jac. L). 



c 



