We now enter on the period of upheaval which marked the 16th century.
From the Conquest down to the reign of the eighth Henry the Abbots of
Waltham had held quiet possession of Loughton. Twice a year, perhaps
oftener, during something like five hundred years, a cavalcade, in the
coarse of its progress from manor to manor, had come to Loughton Hall,
tenanted by the ‘farmer,’ as he was called—lessee, as we should style
him. There the Cellarer, Steward, and Receivers of the Monastery, with
their servants and horses, were entertained for two days, while they held
the Court of the Manor. At this Court transfers of the copyhold estates
were effected; offenders were fined, whether for offences against the
manor or the customs of the Forest; small criminal matters and civil
disputes were settled: and nuisances were ordered to be abated. It is
probable that such a Court held in April, 1539, was the last the Abbots
ever held, and, at it, we learn, the question of a pillory and
cucking-stool was raised. The latter was a low car on two wheels, for
ducking a culprit in pond or river. The instruments were again lacking
in 1582.
On March 3rd. 1540, the Abbot and Canons resigned all their possessions
into the King’s hand, and Loughton became a royal manor. Things probably
went on much the same for a time. The lease of the ‘farmer’ was
confirmed, and he paid to the Kings Treasurer his annual rent of £46,
less certain outgoings, including the repair of the water mill; and other
tenants of the manor did the same. For Hatfields Henry Mynce paid £2
14s. 8d. Included in the various rents are 34 hens, valued at 2d. each.
These hens, handed down as we have seen, from very early times, were
sometimes called ‘smoke hens,’ just as we read of ‘smoke-silver.’ And it
is probable that they were originally something in the nature of a
hearth-tax. It is particularly interesting to note that the England
family—from whom England’s Lane has its name—paid two hens and a cock so
late as 1675, just as five hundred years earlier our friend John Pyrle
paid the same rent for the same freehold land.
For a brief period during the reign of Edward VI. the manor ceased to be
royal; but Lord Darcy held it for little more than a year, and it was
then given to Princess Mary. She, however, about two months afterwards
became Queen, and by her the manor was incorporated into the Duchy of
Lancaster, with the accounts of which it is always thenceforth
associated. It will be convenient here to trace in outline the
subsequent descent of the property.
John Stonard, the lessee under the last Abbot, left a son Robert, who
secured a fresh long lease. To him in turn, a son John succeeded, and
his daughter and heiress Susan, married the eldest son of Sir Thomas
Wroth, of Enfield. Old John Stonard, a wealthy man, bought Luxborough in
Chigwell, where he built a good house. On his death. Sir Robert Wroth
and Susan, his wife, entered into the inheritance. To them succeeded
their eldest son, also Sir Robert, and he, in 1613, bought the fee-simple
of Loughton manor from King James I. In his time there were gay doings
at Loughton Hall, which he rebuilt, and where he entertained, as Ben
Johnson tell us, all sorts and conditions of men.
“The rout of rural folk come thronging in,
(Their rudeness then is thought no sin)
Thy noblest spouse affords them welcome grace;
And the great heroes of her race
Sit mixt with loss of state, or reverence
Freedom doth with degree dispense.
The jolly wassal walks the often round,
And in their cups their cares are drown’d.”
Sir Robert Wroth died no 1614, leaving great debts and an infant son.
The son survived him but two years; the Lady Mary, his widow, lived on
for many, and her extravagance seems to have kept her in perpetual
turmoil. It is quaint, in these democratic days, to read how, year by
year, she received from the King protection-orders, by reason of her
birth and quality, and the earnest intention she expressed of immediately
satisfying her numerous creditors. She was a niece of Sir Philip Sydney,
himself a strangely lavish and impecunious person, and, like him, she
wrote a book—a big book, which made a stir at the time, less perhaps by
reason of its merit than of certain slanders it contained. It was
suppressed and is now forgotten, though occasionally one of the poems,
with which it is interspersed, is quoted in some modern anthology. The
death of her husband gave the succession to his property—sadly diminished
since his father’s day, when the family owned from Luxborough to
Lambourne—to his brother John. After him came a nephew, John the second,
who died at Luxborough in 1661, leaving a young son, John the third, who
married a daughter of Lord Maynard (the ancestor of Lady Warwick), and by
her became father of John Wroth the fourth. John the fourth married a
cousin, Elizabeth Wroth, and died childless. On the death of his widow,
in 1738, a descendant of one of her sisters, William, Earl of Rochford,
became possessor of the manor and advowson, which, in 1745, he sold to
Alderman Whitaker, of London; in 1770 the Alderman’s daughter, Anne,
succeeded her mother, and, in 1825, the estate passed to Mr. John
Maitland, of Woodford Hall, the great-grandfather of the present owner
(1913).