Family and Education

m. Jane, 2s. 9da.

Offices Held

Biography

Hardy was born at Up Sydling, Dorset. He was one of a group of people who, in 1586, bought the Isle of Wight manor of Shamlord near Newport. There may therefore have been an element of local interest in his return to Parliament for Newport, though it is likely that he was introduced to the borough patron, Sir George Carey, by his ‘good lord and master’ Thomas Fleming I, himself a Newport man. Fleming secured Hardy’s (presumably honorary) admission to Lincoln’s Inn in March 1590. In his latter years Hardy settled in Southampton and was present when the borough proclaimed the accession of James I. When he made his will, on 24 July 1606, he was living in the hospital of God’s House there, in which his ‘good cousin and special friend’ Francis Mills is reported to have taken an interest. Hardy remembered both Fleming and Mills, who were brothers-in-law, in his will, and left £100 each to all his younger children. He appointed his wife executrix, and, renouncing his former overseers, whom he did not name, appointed his brother Robert, Emmanuel Budd, Michael Nutley and Thomas Bacon in their stead.

PCC 33 Huddleston; Hutchins, Dorset, iv. 502; VCH Hants, v. 198; J. W. Horrocks, ed. Soton Assembly Bks. i (Soton Rec. Soc.), 31; Speed’s Hist. Soton (Soton Rec. Soc.), 132.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: Patricia Hyde

Notes