TROTT, John (1573-at least 1641), of Colney Hatch, Friern Barnet, Mdx.

Trott’s grandfather was a London Draper, whose widow Rose devoted her latter years to the acquisition of property. At her death in 1575 she owned land in London, Middlesex, Essex and Hertfordshire, including an estate at Colney Hatch, most of which she bequeathed to her son John, Trott’s father. John, who was himself a Draper, lived for some years at one of his mother’s houses in the London parish of St. Mary Colechurch, where Trott was born in 1573. Mdx. Peds. 76; P. Boyd, Roll of Drapers’ Co. of London, 186-7; VCH Mdx. vi. 16; London IPMs, ii. ed. S.J. Madge (Brit. Rec. Soc. xxvi), 189-91. Upon his retirement from business, John settled in a house which he built himself at Colney Hatch. When he died in 1601, this passed to Trott, along with Halliwick manor in Friern Barnet, some farmland in Finchley and Hornsey, Middlesex, and two London tenements which were to be sold to clear John’s debts. PROB 11/97, ff. 188v-90.

Sometime prior to 1604, Trott married the daughter of William Cotton, bishop of Exeter, who had formerly lived in the Finchley area. Cotton possessed influence over the borough of St. Germans, and this explains Trott’s election there in 1604 and 1614. No record survives of his contribution to the House of Commons’ business. T. Fuller, Worthies (1840), ii. 358.

Little is known of Trott’s later life, though he apparently avoided involvement in the cloth trade, and must be distinguished from his namesake, a prominent London haberdasher whose son, John, entered the Commons in the Restoration period. SP14/156/14; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 448; HP Commons, 1660-90, iii. 608. Trott himself seems to have lived quietly at Colney Hatch. In 1628 he sold part of Halliwick manor to his mother and her second husband, but still owned his Finchley lands in 1633. Trott contributed to the parliamentary subsidies granted in 1641, but probably died before December 1645, when he failed to feature as a party to his son’s marriage settlement. Neither a will nor letters of administration regarding his estate have been found. C54/2777/19; C2/Chas.I/T50/47; E179/253/6; VCH Mdx. vi. 16; LMA, Acc. 262/6A.