Corbet family
Corbet Family
Part 1
John Corbet is first found acting for Norwich in 1534-5, when he and Nicholas Hare were paid 24s.8d. by the City for business done in the Exchequer. Three years later Corbet was admitted freeman and on 21st September 1538 excused all Civic Office. This exemption notwithstanding, on 13th August 1540 he was elected steward of the Sheriff’s court in succession to Edmund Grey; he held this office, at a fee of 20 shillings, raised to 26s.8d. on 1544, until 16th August 1547, when he replaced Edmund Grey as Recorder. He was Recorder for three years, but when he resigned on 3rd May 1550 he ‘of his gentleness offered to be in readiness at all times to do any pleasure for the City and Commonalty’, and he was then granted an annual fee of 4 marks and asked to act for the Recorder in his absence.
He combined with his offices at Norwich that of steward of Yarmouth. He also embarked on service in the County: he was presumably the John Corbet senior (to distinguish him from his younger brother) who was put on the commission of the peace in November 1540, his father being probably dead by then, and he was certainly named in the commission of May 1542.
The possibility that Corbet was one of the Members for Norwich in the Parliament of 1536 arises from the inclusion of a ‘Mr. Corbet’ among four Members named on the dorse of an Act for continuing expiring laws passed by that Parliament. The fact that Members so named, probably as having scrutinized the bill concerned, were usually lawyers (as were at least two of the three whose names appear with Corbet’s) tells against his identification with Roger Corbet, the only other bearer of the name who can be presumed to have sat in this Parliament.
If John Corbet did so, it was almost certainly for Norwich. One of the two Members for Norwich in the Parliament of 1529, Reginald Lytilprowe, may either not have survived or have been unable to reappear in its successor, as the King asked all the previous Members to do, and the City could well have chosen Corbet, then on the threshold of his career in its service, to take his place. It is also possible that the long interval before his election for Norwich in 1554 reflected Corbet’s dependence upon the 3rd Duke of Norfolk.
Corbet Family Tree.
Radus Tredwell map 1589
Radus Tredwell map 1589 (Part).
