Pearson (1613–1686) [q. v.], his diocesan, who in 1679 appointed him curate of Wigan church, and in April 1681 presented him to the rectory of Bowdon, Cheshire. This he resigned in March 1689–90. On 1 May 1684 he was installed warden of Manchester College, and in the same year became vicar of Garstang, Lancashire, which benefice he resigned in 1696 on being presented to the rectory of West Kirby, Cheshire. William Hulme [q. v.] appointed him one of the first trustees of the Hulmeian benefactions. As rural dean of Manchester he rendered great assistance to Bishop Gastrell in the compilation of his ‘Notitia Cestriensis.’ He was a student of natural philosophy and a correspondent of Flamsteed (Rigaud, Corresp. of Scientific Men, 1841, ii. 136, 159). During the long period of his wardenship he had great influence in the town, due to his high personal character, earnest piety, and persuasive eloquence. The animation and felicity of his pulpit discourses earned him the title of ‘silver-tongued Wroe.’ As a whig he was sincerely devoted to the Hanoverian dynasty (cf. Hibbert Ware, Foundations in Manchester, ii. 20 et seq.). A number of his letters on public and personal affairs addressed to Roger and George Kenyon, 1694–1713, are preserved in the Kenyon manuscripts (Hist. MSS. Comm. 14th Rep. App. iv. 1894). He was the author of five separately published sermons.
Wroe died at Manchester on 1 Jan. 1717–1718, and was buried in the chancel of the collegiate church. His portrait is in the possession of Lord Kenyon. A few copies of an etched portrait by Geikie were published at Manchester about 1824, and a woodcut appears in the ‘Palatine Notebook,’ 1882.
He was thrice married: first, to Elizabeth (surname unknown), who died in 1689; second, in 1693, to Ann Radcliffe, who died in the following January; third, on 3 March 1697–8, to Dorothy, daughter of Roger Kenyon of Peel, M.P. By his last wife he had four children, three of whom predeceased him; the youngest, Thomas, became a fellow of Manchester College.
[Palatine Notebook, 1882, ii. 1, and authorities there cited; ib. ii. 33, iii. 88, iv. 56, 145; Raines's Wardens of Manchester (Chetham Soc.), ii. 148; Worthington's Diary (Chetham Soc.), ii. 328, 376, 383; Fishwick's Hist. of Garstang (Chetham Soc.), ii. 182; Fishwick's Lancashire Library, p. 418.]
WROTH, Lady MARY (fl. 1621), author of ‘Urania,’ born about 1586, was eldest daughter of Robert Sidney, first earl of Leicester [q. v.], by his first wife, Barbara, daughter of John Gamage. The great Sir Philip Sidney was her father's brother. On 27 Sept. 1604 Lady Mary married, at Penshurst, Sir Robert Wroth, eldest son of Sir Robert Wroth [q. v.] The bridegroom was about ten years his wife's senior. He had been knighted by King James a year before the marriage. On 27 Jan. 1605–6, on his father's death, he succeeded to large property in Essex, including Loughton House and the estate of Durrants in the parish of Enfield. He was a keen sportsman, and the king occasionally visited him at Durrants for hunting. In 1613 Sir Robert was chosen sheriff of Essex. In February 1613–14 Lady Mary bore him an only child, a son (James), and on 14 March following Sir Robert died at Loughton House. He was buried two days later in the church at Enfield. His will was proved on 3 June 1614.
Lady Mary was often at court after her marriage. On Twelfth-night 1604–5 she acted at Whitehall in Ben Jonson's ‘Masque of Blackness.’ She came to know Jonson and the chief poets of the day, and was soon recognised as one of the most sympathetic patronesses of contemporary literature. Ben Jonson dedicated to her, as ‘the lady most deserving her name and blood,’ his play of the ‘Alchemist,’ 1610. He also addressed to her a sonnet in his ‘Underwoods’ (No. 46) and two epigrams (103 and 105). A sonnet addressed to her by Chapman prefaced his translation of Homer's ‘Iliad’ (1614). George Wither in 1613 addressed an epigram to the Lady Mary Wroth, apostrophising her as ‘Arts Sweet Louer’ (Abuses Stript, epigram 10). In the same year (1613) William Gamage, in ‘Linsi-Woolsie: or Two Centuries of Epigrammes,’ inscribed an epigram ‘To the most famous and heroike Lady Mary Wroth’ (Brydges, Censura Literaria, v. 349).
On her husband's death in 1614 Lady Wroth, according to court gossip, was left with a jointure of 1,200l. a year, an infant son, and an estate 23,000l. in debt (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1611–18, pp. 224, 227–8). She lived chiefly at Loughton, and there her only child, James, died on 5 July 1616. In April 1619 she stayed with her father at Baynard's Castle in London. Next month she figured in the procession at Queen Anne's funeral, and the rumour spread that she was about to marry the young Earl of Oxford (Nichols, Progresses of James I, iii. 547). Margaret, widow of Sir John Hawkins the admiral, left to Lady Mary by will, dated 23 April 1619, ‘a gilt bowl, price twenty pounds’ (Notes and Queries, 8th ser. iv.
