Edward Drew

Edward Drew (c.1542–1598) of Killerton, Broadclyst and The Grange, Broadhembury, Devon, was a Serjeant-at-Law to Queen Elizabeth I. He served as a Member of Parliament for Lyme Regis in 1584, twice for Exeter in 1586 and 1588 and in 1592 for the City of London. He occupied the honourable position of Recorder of the City of London.

He was the eldest son of Thomas Drew (b. 1519), by his wife Eleanora Huckmore, a daughter and co-heiress of William Huckmore of Devon, and appears to have been born at the family seat of Sharpham, in the parish of Ashprington, near Totnes, Devon.

He attended Exeter College, Oxford, as evidenced by an entry in the register of that university recording a payment in 1557 by a Mr. Martyn of 2 shillings for the expenses of Drew, a scholar of the college. He does not appear to have taken a degree, but proceeded to London and devoted himself to the study of the law, being admitted a student of the Inner Temple in November 1560, then probably of the usual age of eighteen.

He obtained a lucrative practice both in London and in Devon, and rapidly attained high legal distinctions. He became a Master of the Bench of the Inner Temple in 1581, and Lent Reader in 1584; his shield of arms with this date still remains in Inner Temple Hall. In Michaelmas term 1589, together with seven other counsel, Drew was appointed Serjeant-at-Law. Two of his associates in the honour of the coif (John Glanville and Thomas Harris) were fellow Devonians, and Fuller in his Worthies of England records a popular saying about the three serjeants, that "One gained as much as the other two, one spent as much as the other two, one gave as much as the other two". Drew seems to answer best to the first description as his success in pleading enabling him to purchase large estates in Combe Raleigh, Broadhembury, Broadclyst, in Devon and elsewhere.

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