don, 4to. Gradually inclining towards the views of the independents, Wroth retained his seat in the Long parliament through all its vicissitudes, and on 3 Jan. 1647–8 moved the famous resolution that Charles I should be impeached and the kingdom settled without him (Gardiner, Civil War, iv. 50). He took the ‘engagement’ in 1649, and was one of the judges appointed to try the king, but he attended only one session (Noble, Regicides, ii. 339–40). In June following he was thanked by parliament for suppressing the levellers in Somerset. Wroth does not appear to have sat in the parliaments of 1653 and 1654, but on 20 Oct. 1656 was again returned for Bridgwater, which he is said to have represented in Richard Cromwell's parliament of 1658–9, and for which he certainly sat in the Convention parliament of 1660. His petition for pardon (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1660–1, p. 9) was apparently granted (but cf. ib. 1661–2, p. 57), and Wroth lived in retirement until his death, aged 88, at Petherton Park on 11 July 1672. His will was proved on 24 Aug. following.
He left no issue by his wife Margaret, and did not marry again, his estates passing to his great-nephew, Sir John Wroth, second baronet (d. 1674), son of Sir John Wroth, first baronet (d. 1664), a royalist who fought with distinction at Newbury, and was created a baronet in 1660, and grandson of Sir Thomas's brother, Sir Peter Wroth. The baronetcy became extinct on the death of Sir John Wroth, third baronet, on 27 June 1722.
[Cal. State Papers, Dom. and Amer. and West Indies, 1574–1660; Commons' Journals; Official Return Memb. of Parl.; Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, iii. 514–16; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Noble's Regicides, ii. 339–40; List of Sheriffs, 1898; Inner Temple Records, i. 440, 442; Harl. MS. 2218, f. 24 b; Addit. MS. 16279, ff. 224–5; Visitation of Somerset, 1623 (Harl. Soc.), p. 147; Sir Thomas Phillips's Visitation of Somerset; Collinson's Hist. of Somerset, iii. 62–80; Visitation of London (Harl. Soc.), ii. 373–4; Park's Hist. of Hampstead, p. 115; Davy's Suffolk Collections (Addit. MS. 19156, f. 257); Hunter's Chorus Vatum in Addit. MS. 2449, f. 462; Burke's Extinct Baronetcies; Brown's Genesis U.S.A.; Gardiner's Civil War, iv. 50; Wroth's Works, and authorities cited in text.]
WROTH, WILLIAM (1576?–1642), Welsh nonconformist, was born about 1576 in the neighbourhood of Abergavenny. He was of good family, and on 27 Nov. 1590 matriculated at Oxford from New Inn Hall. On 18 Feb. 1595–6 he graduated B.A. from Christ Church, and on 26 June 1605 M.A. from Jesus College. In 1611 he was presented by Sir Edward Lewis of Van to the rectory of Llan Faches, Monmouthshire, to which was added in 1613 that of Llanfihangel Roggiett, hard by. About 1620 the sudden death of a friend made a deep impression upon him, and he became renowned as an earnest preacher and a zealous puritan. So large was the concourse of folk who came to hear him that he frequently preached in the churchyard; he visited other districts, and was especially in request at Bristol. His zeal led to his being summoned in 1635 before the court of high commission; the case, however, was not promptly dealt with, for in 1637 Wroth was still reckoned ‘refractory,’ though in 1638 he had made some kind of submission. In November 1639, having resigned (or been ejected from) his living, he formed at Llan Faches, with the aid of Henry Jessey [q. v.] and Walter Cradock [q. v.], the first separatist church in Wales, of which he was chosen pastor. He died in the early part of 1642. Cradock, in a sermon preached before the House of Commons in 1646, speaks of Wroth as ‘that blessed apostle of South Wales,’ and quotes, in illustration of his pastoral diligence, a saying of his ‘that there was not one person in his congregation whose spiritual estate he did not fully know.’
[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Rees's Hist. of Protestant Nonconformity in Wales; Laud's Works, vol. v. passim; Life of Henry Jessey.]
WROTHAM, WILLIAM de (d. 1217), judge, was the grandson of Geoffrey de Wrotham of Baddenville, near Wrotham in Kent, a domestic servant of several archbishops of Canterbury, including Hubert Walter [see Hubert], who gave him lands near Wrotham, Kent. By his wife, Maud de Cornhill, Geoffrey was father of William de Wrotham (d. 1208?), who was sheriff of Devonshire in 1198–9, acted as justiciar in the reigns of Richard I and John, and married Muriel de Lydd. As he survived until about 1208, it is difficult to distinguish him from his son, but apparently it was the son who was custos of the stanneries of Devonshire and Cornwall from 1199 to 1213 (Madox, History of the Exchequer, ii. 132), and appears in 1204 as one of the bailiffs of the seaports and of the fifteenth of merchandise, and in 1205 as one of the ‘custodes galearum.’ On 30 Sept. 1206 he was acting as custodian, with Hugh of Wells, of the temporalities of the bishopric of Bath and the abbey of Glastonbury (Rot. Pat. p. 57 b); and on 4 Feb. 1206 he was appointed to inquire into the maladministration of the borough of London
