Family and Education

1st s. of Anthony Huddleston of Millom by Marie, da. of Sir William Barentyne^† of Little Haseley, Oxon. m. Mary Bridges of Glos., 7s. 8da. suc. fa. 1598.

Offices Held

Sheriff, Cumb. 1617-18.1

Biography

Returned to Elizabeth’s last Parliament as knight of the shire for Cumberland, Huddleston could have attended the main business committee (3 Nov.), the committee on monopolies (23 Nov.), one to strengthen the defences of the northern border (3 Dec.) and another to regulate the local government of the northern counties (14 Dec.). During the course of the Parliament his servant was arrested for non-payment of a surgeon’s bill, but the House granted him privilege and censured the surgeon (15 Dec.).2

Several lawsuits over his estates expose Huddleston as a violent, contentious man, at odds with neighbours, relations and the law. One concerned a neighbour, John Hill, a yeoman of the guard and a tenant of the duchy of Lancaster. In May 1607 Huddleston and his son Anthony, with 20 retainers, broke into Hill’s house ‘sparing neither sex nor age’, and dragging the ladies ‘by the hair of their heads, in most barbarous and exorbitant manner’. When the bailiffs arrived with a writ of attachment from the Chancery court, they were sent away, with the writ and ‘a box under the ear ... for a token’. Other misdeeds included issuing licences for the sale of beer, taking bonds for good behaviour and summoning people before him, ‘as if he were a justice of the peace’.

Huddleston died in 1628, and was buried on 25 Mar. in the chancel of Millom church. He hoped his family would live together in Christian harmony.3

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: B.D.

Notes

• 1. Vis. Cumb. 23; Nicholson and Burn, Hist. Cumb. ii. 11-12; Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xxiv. 228; VCH Cumb. ii. 317.
• 2. D’Ewes, 624, 649, 657, 665, 680, 685, 686.
• 3. St. Ch. 7/2/22; 8/167/23; Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans. l. 275 seq.; Hatfield ms 108/113; APC, 1613-14, p. 136; 1625-6, pp. 89-90; 1626, p. 16; CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 411; 1625-6, p. 369; 1627-8, pp. 71, 226, 509; Hutchinson, Hist. Cumb. i. 528; Daniel Fleming, Surv. of Cumb. and Westmld. (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. tract ser. iii), 3-4; PCC 56 Barrington; Registers of Millom, Cumb. (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc.), 184.