Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Keilway, Robert
KEILWAY, KELLWAY, or KAYLWAY, ROBERT (1497–1581), legal reporter, was in 1543 the recipient of a grant of the wardship and marriage of Eliz. and Anne Whittocksmede (Pat. Roll, 35 Henry VIII, p. 2), and subsequently of many other minors, a privilege from which he no doubt reaped considerable profit. In 1547 he was autumn reader at the Inner Temple, and in May of that year surveyor of the court of wards and liveries. In September 1547 he, with Lord St. John, was appointed to inquire into the state of the crown revenues, and in the following February was made custos rotulorum of Berkshire. In 1549 he was a commissioner in the western counties for the sale of dissolved chantries. He was serjeant-at-law in 1552, and treasurer of the Inner Temple in 1557–8. In 1559 his name appears as a commissioner in an inquiry about to be held as to the revenues from episcopal lands. In August 1564 he was selected by the privy council to exhort the clothiers of Reading to continue their trade, and not, by its stoppage, throw a large proportion of the inhabitants out of employment (State Papers, Domestic Eliz. vol. xxxix. No. 43).
He made his will on 6 July 1580 (Prerog. Court of Canterbury, Darcy Register, fol. 9). The only person of his name mentioned is his ‘cousin’ Francis, son and heir of Sir William Keilway or Kelloway, knt., deceased. He refers to his dwelling-houses in the Temple, in Fleet Street, at Stepney, and at Shawlingford, Berkshire. He constitutes Sir Thomas Bromley, knt., the lord chancellor, one of his executors, and leaves him one of his best horses or geldings. He died at Exton, Rutland, on 21 Feb. 1581, and was buried there. An only child, Anne, was then the wife of ‘John Harrington, esq.’ His property lay chiefly in Warwickshire (Inquisitiones Post Mortem, 23 Eliz. pt. i. No. 50).
The legal reports with which his name is associated were first published in 1602, under the title ‘Relationes quorundam casuum selectorum ex libris Rob. Keilwey Arm. qui temporibus felicissimæ memoriæ Regis Henrici Septimi et inclitissimi Regis Henrici 8vi emerserunt et in prioribus impressionibus relationum de terminis illorum Regum non exprimuntur in lucem editæ anno 44o illustrissimi regni serenissimæ Reginæ Elizabethæ.’ The work was reprinted in 1633 and 1688.
[Entries in the Patent Rolls at the Public Record Office, under the dates of the different appointments; Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple, privately printed, 1883; Strype's Annals, I. i. 55; Strype's Memorials, III. ii. 181.]