Robert Foulkes

Robert Foulkes (baptised 19 March 1633/34-died 31 January 1678/79), was a Wales-born English Church of England clergyman and murderer.

Although long presumed to have been a native of Shropshire in England, Foulkes was born and baptised at Mallwyd, Wales, son of namesake Robert Foulkes and is known to have had an older sibling, brother John, with whom he attended Shrewsbury School in 1648-49.

Foulkes, sums up Anthony à Wood, ‘became a servitor of Christ Church, Oxford, in Michaelmas term 1651, where he continued more than four years, under the tuition and government of Presbyterians and independents. Afterwards entering into the sacred function he became a preacher, and at length vicar of Stanton Lacy in his own county of Shropshire, and took to him a wife'.

Foulkes married on 7 September 1657, at Ludlow parish church, Isabella, daughter of Thomas Colbatch (died 1637), a deceased former rector of the same parish, three years before his induction as vicar at Stanton Lacy on 12 September 1660. The couple had four children, born between 1665 and 1673.

Isabella had been brought up in the home of Stanton Lacy's previous vicar, Thomas Atkinson (died 1657) Among other children Atkinson had left a daughter, Ann (born about 1650), with whom Foulkes began a relationship rumoured to be going on as early as 1669. Foulkes, who had been a zealous preacher in the early years of his incumbency, was later reported seen publicly misbehaving with Atkinson and became a heavy drinker at local alehouses.

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