Elizabeth & Francis Trentham of Rocester Abbey

The Shropshire years

The earliest member of the Trentham family to emerge from the mists of time was, according to the ‘Visitation of Staffordshire, 1583’, William Trentham of Shrewsbury who died around the year 1420. As their drapery business prospered over the coming years the family would establish themselves as leading burgesses of the town. William’s son John (d. 1484) is the earliest Trentham to have left his mark in the archive record, that of the Shrewsbury Drapers’ Company, whose papers contain his signature on many property conveyances in Shrewsbury as a witness. His son Thomas Trentham I (d. c. 1529), we know little about beyond the fact that he too became a pillar of town society, becoming bailiff of Shrewsbury four times.

But it was his only son and heir, Thomas Trentham II (c.1468-c.1519), whose life first provides the Trentham line with some anecdotal colour for, during his teens, he seems to have lived a somewhat dissolute lifestyle. His burgess-ship was even taken away from him, briefly, after he and his companions had raided the town gaol to free a friend of theirs, and the many complaints made against him for riotous behaviour and for keeping seventeen of his unruly companions in food, lodging and money are recorded in the archive of the Star Chamber.

All this must have given his father cause for embarrassment, given the family’s standing in the town, but he needn’t have worried for too long because the young Thomas soon pulled his socks up. One of the undoubted influences on his character reformation was his good fortune in contracting an excellent marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Richard Corbet of Moreton Corbet - a man of some influence and with connections to the royal court. Doubtless it was Corbet influence that enabled Thomas to enter Henry VIII’s second parliament for Shrewsbury in 1512 and to be re-elected in 1515 having had some foreign adventure in between serving under the Earl of Shrewsbury in the French campaign of 1513. Thomas Trentham II predeceased his father by a decade, and was living with his family in London at the time of his death in 1519.

Perhaps the most influential development for the Trentham family that resulted from the Corbet marriage was that the two sons of Thomas Trentham II, Richard and Robert, were able to make their early careers as esquires in the royal household itself. Richard (c.1500-1547) inherited the family estate on the death of his grandfather and evidently divided his time between Shrewsbury and the royal court for, shortly before he became Cup Bearer to the young Prince of Wales, later Edward VI, in 1536, he became the MP for Shrewsbury. One year later, a very curious coincidence occurs.

I’m often asked by friends whether the Trentham family of my researches has any relationship to the vast former estate of the Dukes of Sutherland (Leveson-Gower family) at Trentham in Staffordshire - a few miles down the road. Having always replied in the negative, imagine how surprising it was to discover recently that, in fact, Richard Trentham was granted the lease to the lands of Trentham Priory in November 1537. I doubt whether he ever actually took up residence there and yet a permanent move across the border into Staffordshire followed shortly after - and this was certainly Richard’s greatest bequest to the Trentham fortunes.

John Sneyd, in the late 19C, hand drew a series of family trees of related families and had them bound into his 1844 edition of Erdeswick's 'A view of Staffordshire'. This page shows his Trentham family chart. His entry on Edward de Vere describes him as, "Patriot, wit & Commander in expedition against Armada, 1588. Introduced perfumes at English court."

GE Cokayne, a Victorian ancestor of the Trenthams and author of 'The Complete Peerage', drew this family tree showing the relationship between the Trenthams and the Sneyds. Interestingly, he had no information at this time about Elizabeth Trentham who married Edward de Vere. He later refers to her as 'Anne'.