POOLE, Sir Henry (c.1541-1616), of Sapperton, Glos.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. c.1541, 1st s. of Sir Giles Poole by his 1st w. educ. I. Temple 1562. m. Anne, da, of Sir William Wroughton of Broad Hinton, Wilts., 3s. 4da. Kntd. 1587; suc. fa. 1589.

Offices Held

J.p. Glos. from c.1573, eccles. commr. 1574, sheriff 1588, 1603, subsidy commr. 1593, commr. for restraint of grain; member, council in marches of Wales (and j.p. many border counties) 1594.

Biography

Poole increased his inherited estates by judicious purchases of land and advowsons. Before 1585 he had bought the manor of Pinbury, in 1601 he paid £1,320 to the Berkeleys for the manor and advowson of Daglingworth, and the same year he bought the manor of Edgworth. Shortly before his death he paid the Danvers family £2,600 for the manors of Cirencester Oakley, Siddington Peter and Siddington Mary.1

Throughout his life Poole was active in local affairs. In 1578 he was one of those who brought to the notice of the Privy Council ‘a sect of disordered persons, using to assemble together in a desolate place ... appointing unto themselves a minister and a private order of service, according to their own fantasies’, and, with his father, was ordered to round them up and send them before the Council. In 1589 he was again occupied with religious matters when he was ordered to search out the publishers of ‘divers shameful and infamous letters, libels and other scandalous and shameful devices’, which had been circulating in the county, and which tended to discredit the ministry. He received many other commissions from the Council. In 1592, for instance, he was instructed to enforce the use of standard measures in Salisbury, and in 1596 he supervised the Gloucestershire levies for Ireland. On two occasions, in 1600 and 1601, he was himself ordered to send a horse for service there.2

Poole was 50 when he made his only appearance in Parliament. There is no record of his speaking, but he was on all three committees concerned with the subsidy negotiations (26 Feb., 1, 3 Mar.); on a committee dealing with rogues (12 Mar.); and, as a knight of the shire in 1593 he could have attended committees on land inheritance (9 Mar.) and cloth (15 Mar.).

On 10 Aug. 1616, being ‘sick in body’, Poole made his will. After directing that his body should be buried in Sapperton church, and setting aside £5 for ‘the reparations and beautifying of the same church’, and a further sum of money toward the erection of ‘a comely and convenient tomb’ for himself and his wife, he left the bulk of his property to his only surviving son, and sole executor, Henry Poole. Poole died on 31 Aug. that year and the will was proved 10 Nov. An inquisition post mortem was held in 1617.3

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: J.J.C.

Notes

  • 1. W. R. Williams, Parl. Hist. Glos. 48; Vis. Glos. (Harl. Soc. xxi), 125-6; J. R. Dunlop, Fam. of Poole, 4-5; C142/222/45; Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans. xii. 55; l. 210-13; lix. 66; APC, xxiv. 474; Lansd. 48, f. 137; P. H. Williams, Council in the Marches of Wales, 354-5.
  • 2. APC, x. 426-7; xi. 37; xviii. 287; xxii. 501; xxvi. 277; xxx. 439.
  • 3. D’Ewes, 474, 481, 486, 496, 499, 501; PCC 116 Cope; C142/365/153.