Description:The Smalbroke family are first recorded in the Birmingham area in 1425/6, when William Smalbroke is recorded as a trustee of charitable property at Yardley [584318 DV 860]. They appear to have remained yeomen in Yardley throughout the 15th century, and in the late 16th century built Blakesley Hall.
Thomas Smalbroke and his son Richard married three times and Richard continued the process of enlarging the estates in the difficult years of the Civil War and Commonwealth. Richard’s third wife was Margaret Knight, widow of a successful London lawyer whose family owned an estate at Rowington (Warks). The family’s ties with the Knights were strengthened in the next generation, when Samuel Smalbroke married successively Elizabeth Knight and Elizabeth Kine (née Knight), and by 1682 Samuel Smalbroke was styling himself `of Rowington, gent. It was Samuel Smalbroke’s acquisition of the Rowington estate which completed the family’s transition from burgesses to country gentlemen, and his son Richard (1672-1749) was not only educated as a gentleman but became a clergyman and successively bishop of St Davids and of Lichfield and Coventry.
The letters featured here form part of a series of correspondence to William Knight junior of Clements Inn, London, from his father (William senior of Rowington), and various family members. The letters were written around the time of the Englilsh Civil War and are some of the few surviving records in the Library of Birmingham from the period.
The letters very largely concern attempts by his family to extract gifts, loans, presents and favours from William junior, who was a modestly successful lawyer. The subjects covered include a debt owed to Sir John Burgoyne by William senior; the purchase of wine in London for Francis owing to its scarcity in the Midlands; requests from William senior for religious books, including a Bible to replace one that was plundered; request by Elizabeth to pay a bond; request from Elizabeth for a pound of tobacco; reflections on the death of Lord Brooke and requests from Robert for a cap and feather and other presents, 1642.
[MS 1098/3/1/1: Finding number MS 1098/115]