Family and Education

b. by 1493. m. at least twice, at least 2da., 1s. illegit.2

Offices Held

Yeoman of the crown in 1514, valet 1526; commr. subsidy, Worcs. 1515, loan 1524; bailiff, Worcester 1522-3, 1524-5.3

Biography

Hugh Dee was probably son, or at least kinsman, of John Dee, also yeoman of the crown, who in 1493 was granted jointly with Philip ap John the receivership of three lordships in the earldom of March. Dee was himself a yeoman of the crown when in March 1514 he received a grant for 40 years of the alnage of woollen cloth of the town of Presteigne in the marches of Wales. To this grant he evidently added similar ones, for in his will he left ‘the years and interest’ in the alnage of the town and county of Worcester and the town and county of Hereford to his executors and supervisor, Thomas Acton, Richard Newport and Thomas Evans, the two first-named being perhaps members of the Shropshire and Worcestershire families which were represented in the parliamentary ranks. In the will Dee also mentions ‘all my shop’. Asking to be buried in the cathedral churchyard next to his first wife, he made bequests to local religious institutions, to two daughters, one of them married, and to an illegitimate son William.4

Dee’s will, as registered for probate, is dated 28 Oct. 1530 but as it was proved on 27 June of that year it must have been made earlier: the most likely date is 28 Oct. 1529, on the eve of his setting out to attend the Parliament which assembled a week later. Whether he died in the course of the first session, or after it finished on 17 Dec., cannot be established. He was correctly marked ‘mortuus’ (unlike his fellow-Member John Braughing, whose death was prematurely recorded there) on the official list of Members when it came to be revised in 1532, but when and by whom his place was filled is not known. A list of vacant seats drawn up by Cromwell in 1532 or early 1533 includes a vacancy at Worcester, with the annotation ‘the King to name one’, but the conclusion which has been drawn from another list that the vacancy was filled by John Hillesley (q.v.) is a mistaken one. What is more likely is that Thomas Hill, who in September 1536 was described by the city authorities as ‘late one of our citizens of the Parliament’, first replaced Dee for the remaining sessions of the Parliament and then, in accordance with the King’s general request of 1536 for the re-election of the previous Members, sat again in the Parliament of that year. The similarity in the names Hill and Hillesley could account for the earlier confusion.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Authors: L. M. Kirk / M. K. Dale

Notes

• 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from first reference. PCC 20 Jankyn.
• 3. LP Hen. VIII, i, iv; Statutes, iii. 173; Nash. Worcs. ii. App. cxii.
• 4. CPR, 1485-94, p. 430; PCC 20 Jankyn; LP Hen. VIII, i.
• 5. Jnl. of Prior Wm. More (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 1914), 41-49; LP Hen. VIII, vii. 56 citing SP1/82, ff. 59-62; ix. 1077 citing SP1/99, p. 234.