The Reformation.

We now enter on the period of upheaval which marked the 16th century.  From the Conquest down to the reign of the eighth Henry the Abbots of Waltham had held quiet possession of Loughton.  Twice a year, perhaps oftener, during something like five hundred years, a cavalcade, in the coarse of its progress from manor to manor, had come to Loughton Hall, tenanted by the ‘farmer,’ as he was called—lessee, as we should style him.  There the Cellarer, Steward, and Receivers of the Monastery, with their servants and horses, were entertained for two days, while they held the Court of the Manor.  At this Court transfers of the copyhold estates were effected; offenders were fined, whether for offences against the manor or the customs of the Forest; small criminal matters and civil disputes were settled: and nuisances were ordered to be abated.  It is probable that such a Court held in April, 1539, was the last the Abbots ever held, and, at it, we learn, the question of a pillory and cucking-stool was raised.  The latter was a low car on two wheels, for ducking a culprit in pond or river.  The instruments were again lacking in 1582.

On March 3rd. 1540, the Abbot and Canons resigned all their possessions into the King’s hand, and Loughton became a royal manor.  Things probably went on much the same for a time.  The lease of the ‘farmer’ was confirmed, and he paid to the Kings Treasurer his annual rent of £46, less certain outgoings, including the repair of the water mill; and other tenants of the manor did the same.  For Hatfields Henry Mynce paid £2 14s. 8d.  Included in the various rents are 34 hens, valued at 2d. each.  These hens, handed down as we have seen, from very early times, were sometimes called ‘smoke hens,’ just as we read of ‘smoke-silver.’  And it is probable that they were originally something in the nature of a hearth-tax.  It is particularly interesting to note that the England family—from whom England’s Lane has its name—paid two hens and a cock so late as 1675, just as five hundred years earlier our friend John Pyrle paid the same rent for the same freehold land.

For a brief period during the reign of Edward VI. the manor ceased to be royal; but Lord Darcy held it for little more thana year, and it was then given to Princess Mary.  She, however, about two months afterwards became Queen, and by her the manor was incorporated into the Duchy of Lancaster, with the accounts of which it is always thenceforth associated.  It will be convenient here to trace in outline the subsequent descent of the property.

John Stonard, the lessee under the last Abbot, left a son Robert, who secured a fresh long lease.  To him in turn, a son John succeeded, and his daughter and heiress Susan, married the eldest son of Sir Thomas Wroth, of Enfield.  Old John Stonard, a wealthy man, bought Luxborough in Chigwell, where he built a good house.  On his death.  Sir Robert Wroth and Susan, his wife, entered into the inheritance.  To them succeeded their eldest son, also Sir Robert, and he, in 1613, bought the fee-simple of Loughton manor from King James I.  In his time there were gay doings at Loughton Hall, which he rebuilt, and where he entertained, as Ben Johnson tell us, all sorts and conditions of men.

“The rout of rural folk come thronging in, (Their rudeness then is thought no sin) Thy noblest spouse affords them welcome grace; And the great heroes of her race Sit mixt with loss of state, or reverence Freedom doth with degree dispense. The jolly wassal walks the often round, And in their cups their cares are drown’d.”

Sir Robert Wroth died no 1614, leaving great debts and an infant son.  The son survived him but two years; the Lady Mary, his widow, lived on for many, and her extravagance seems to have kept her in perpetual turmoil.  It is quaint, in these democratic days, to read how, year by year, she received from the King protection-orders, by reason of her birth and quality, and the earnest intention she expressed of immediately satisfying her numerous creditors.  She was a niece of Sir Philip Sydney, himself a strangely lavish and impecunious person, and, like him, she wrote a book—a big book, which made a stir at the time, less perhaps by reason of its merit than of certain slanders it contained.  It was suppressed and is now forgotten, though occasionally one of the poems, with which it is interspersed, is quoted in some modern anthology.  The death of her husband gave the succession to his property—sadly diminished since his father’s day, when the family owned from Luxborough to Lambourne—to his brother John.  After him came a nephew, John the second, who died at Luxborough in 1661, leaving a young son, John the third, who married a daughter of Lord Maynard (the ancestor of Lady Warwick), and by her became father of John Wroth the fourth.  John the fourth married a cousin, Elizabeth Wroth, and died childless.  On the death of his widow, in 1738, a descendant of one of her sisters, William, Earl of Rochford, became possessor of the manor and advowson, which, in 1745, he sold to Alderman Whitaker, of London; in 1770 the Alderman’s daughter, Anne, succeeded her mother, and, in 1825, the estate passed to Mr. John Maitland, of Woodford Hall, the great-grandfather of the present owner (1913).