Samuel Wood (Trevalyn) to Lady Tirringham (near Westminster Abbey): needs more money to pay their weekly allowances to the poor men in the almshouses which were built and endowed by her father as the sum she left with him was soon used up and he does not wish to use money of Sir John Trevor's for this purpose any longer as although he had assented to this temporarily he has since not been able to contact him about it 'after the times grew so troublesome'; there were only 2 almsmen left as 4 had died and he had continued to pay these until about 11 April 1642 but 'then the Commissioners of Array having by that time got into their hands the power of disposing of all Sir John's revenue were pleased to … 4 more almsmen should be elected and that they should have … gainst winter and each of them a sca… and that forty shillings should be bestowed … a new one of the chimneys of the almshouses the wind had blown down and repairing the roof which that chimney shaft had broken by falling on it. And they ordered all this to be paid forth of the rent of the Pace and boardlands' tithes which are Sir John's (they thinking and being informed that those tithes belonged to that chapel where the almshouse was built. And though, when they sent for me to give me command to pay all this I told them they were misinformed … yet they would needs have it so and (as the case then stood) I thought it not fit to contest much against the good of poor men, only I desired that either your Ladyship might be made acquainted with it first and give allowance of the 4 new elected men or at least that your Ladyship's two sisiters in these parts might have the nomination of them and they granted that they should have the nomination of 3 of them but that Lieutenant Colonel Robinson had named one ?...erise who had been his father's butler for one of the 4 … 2 of the other three Mrs Lloyd named, viz: one Hugh, her old servant and old William Tailer her old tenant by the low ground in Allington and though the Lady Hanmer would have named some neighbour of hers about Hanmer yet they would not admit of any that lived out of the county of Denbigh so then she named the 4th to be Thomas Peirs one of Sir John's tenants in Gresford, a poor lame man. So these 4 and the 2 old (which were Richard Jenkin and John Ward) have ever sithence been paid by me 6s a week …'; writer acknowledges that he was released from payment of them as soon as the Parliament power prevailed in those parts and that he should have told Sir John when he was in London but he had little time there and more weighty matters to tell him and he did not want to leave the poor men unpaid 'in the midst of such needy and distracted times as we meet with in these parts and that chiefly by reason of the long siege of Holt …'; however, Sir John is now pressing him for his money and the writer, knowing how poor his tenants are, and that Sir John's demesne lands are now worth only half what they previously were, he finds he can no longer pay the almsmen or the curate and seeks recipient's directions.
Letter
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- ReferenceGB 208 D-G/178/91
- Alternative Id.GB 208 D/G/3275/91
- Dates of Creation15 Jan 1646/7
- Physical Description1 item
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