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SHAW, Richard (by 1533-63 or later), of Langton Matravers, Dorset.
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Family and Education
b. by 1533, ?s. of Peter Shaw by Elizabeth.1
Offices Held
Subsidy collector, Pimperne hundred, Dorset 1559-60.2
Biography
Richard Shaw was a client of Sir John Rogers, the most eminent figure in west Dorset during the middle years of the 16th century: the village where he had his home belonged to Rogers. Shaw doubtless owed his nomination at Poole to his master who, although he had no personal links with the borough, would have been able to rely on the support of one of its patrons, his colleague, Richard Phelips. Phelips may have introduced Shaw to Melcombe Regis where his son-in-law, Sir John Horsey, was powerful, but it was to Rogers that Shaw was obliged since Rogers entered into an agreement with the townsmen on 11 Jan. 1558 for the election of Richard Shaw ‘yeoman’ as one of their Members in return for Rogers’s paying his parliamentary expenses. His two further appearances in the Commons were also at the instance of Rogers.3
Apart from his dependence on Rogers (presumably he was in Rogers’s service since all that is known about him implies such a relationship) little trace has been found of Shaw, and none of the references after Roger’s death in 1565 to men of the same name in other parts of the country can certainly be attributed to him. Shaw is, however, probably to be identified with a litigant in Chancery during the 1560s over the title to property in Dorset and Sussex.4