Officials: Smyth, Richard

RICHARD SMYTH (SMYTHE/SMITH), official of the archdeacon of Chester, d. 1554

Qualifications: Bachelor of Law; Bachelor of Canon Law (no university attendance has been traced.)

CCEd person ID 37371

Career: Rector of Holy Trinity, Chester 1505 -1507; rector of Bury 1507- 1554; probably rector of Wigan 1551 -1554; probably vicar of Sandbach 1548-1554.

He resigned the living of Holy Trinity, valued at £8 15s 6d, and on the same day in October 1507 was admitted to the rectory of Bury, valued at £29 11s 4d (Cooper). He was presented to both livings by Thomas Stanley, earl of Derby.

Commissary of the short-lived additional consistory court of Bury set up by Adam Beconsall; official of the archdeacon of Chester (see EDC 5/1/7), appointed c 1524 until at least 1542; it was reported that while he held this position he regularly took bribes from the laity to cover up moral offences.

Further notes: He was unpopular with his parishioners at Bury and in 1526 he appointed a parish clerk who was unacceptable to certain parishioners who attacked him and the clerk during a service in the church. He claimed that this violence had caused the church to be put under an interdict. Smyth claimed that such violence had been inflicted upon him that he was afraid to go out or to enter the church.

He built a chapel attached to Bury church which he may have intended as a chantry for himself.

He was plaintiff in a tithe cause which may be found at EDC 5/8/1.

Sources:

George T. O. Bridgeman, The History of the Church and Manor of Wigan in the County of Lancaster, part I (Chetham Society, new series, 15, 1888), pp. 121-128

Tim Cooper, The Last Generation of English Catholic Clergy: Parish Priests in the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield in the Early Sixteenth Century (Woodbridge, 1999)’ p. 61

J. P. Earwaker, The History of the Ancient Parish of Sandbach (No place of publication, 1890), p. 46

Christopher Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 3-4, 57

Douglas Jones, The Church in Chester 1300-1540 (Chetham Society 3rd series, 7, 1957), p. 172

‘Henry VIII: April 1535, 1-10’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 8, January-July 1535, ed. James Gairdner (London, 1885), pp. 188-202. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol8/pp188-202  (495)

‘The parish of Bury’, in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 5, ed. William Farrer and J Brownbill (London, 1911), pp. 122-128. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol5/pp122-128