Hugh's younger brother was the more prominent Sir
Richard Pollard (1505–1542), MP for
Taunton (1536) and for
Devon (1539, 1542), of
Putney, Surrey, King's Remembrancer of the Exchequer and a law reporter,[7] who was an assistant of
Thomas Cromwell in administering the surrender of religious houses following the
Dissolution of the Monasteries.[8] In 1537 Thomas was granted by King Henry VIII the manor of
Combe Martin in Devon[9] and in 1540
Forde Abbey.
Career
He was
Recorder of Barnstaple in 1545, to which honorary officer the
Borough of Barnstaple entrusted the nominations of its two Member of Parliament.[10] One of the MP's he nominated was
George Rolle (d.1552), a London lawyer, who in 1523 had been appointed by a private Act of Parliament as life tenant of the office of "Keeper of the Writs and Rolls of the Court of Common Pleas", due to his "long good and perfect knowledge and experience" of the functioning of that Court. Rolle was thus an associate of Sir Hugh's father, Sir Lewis Pollard, one of the Judges of the Common Pleas. It was in the small Devonshire parish of St Giles in the Wood, the ancestral home of the Pollards, where Rolle purchased his seat of
Stevenstone, which eventually at the start of the 20th century became the caput of "the largest estate Devon had ever seen",[11] today managed by the
Clinton Devon Estates company.
Through the influence of his younger brother Sir Richard Pollard he obtained the wardship of Richard Bury (1516–1543), son and heir of John Bury (d.1533)
lord of the
manor of Colleton in the parish of
Chulmleigh, Devon, whom he married to his daughter Elizabeth Pollard. Richard Pollard obtained as his own wife John Bury's daughter Jacquetta, as promised him in her father's will.[12]
Elizabeth Pollard, married firstly Richard Bury (1516–1543) lord of the manor of
Colleton, Chulmleigh,[15] whose wardship and marriage had been purchased by her father, with the helpful influence of his brother Richard Pollard, the government official. Richard Pollard managed at the same time to persuade Richard Bury's father John IV Bury (1481–1533) to give him for his own wife his daughter Jacquetta Bury.[16] Secondly Elizabeth Pollard married Henry Dillon (d.1579) of Chimwell,
Bratton Fleming, lord of the manor of
Bratton Fleming, whose sister Dorothy Dillon was the wife of Elizabeth's cousin Hugh Pollard of
Knowstone.
Secondly he married Dorothy Carew, daughter of Sir Edmund Carew (1465–1513) of
Mohuns Ottery in the parish of
Luppitt, Devon, (killed in 1513 at the Siege of
Thérouanne, in
Artois, part of the
Battle of the Spurs or Battle of
Guinegate) and widow of John Stowell, by whom he had a further daughter Dorothy Pollard (d.1559/60), the first of three wives of Robert Courtenay (d. 1583),
lord of the
manor of Molland in Devon.[17]
References
^Vivian, Heraldic Visitations of Devon, 1895, p.597
^Byrne, Muriel St. Clare, (ed.) The Lisle Letters, 6 vols, University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1981, vol.1, p.604; Vivian, Lt.Col. J.L., (Ed.) The Visitations of the County of Devon: Comprising the Heralds' Visitations of 1531, 1564 & 1620, Exeter, 1895, p.123, pedigree of Bury of Colliton
^Youings, Joyce, Devon Monastic Lands: Calendar of Particulars for Grants 1536–1558, Devon & Cornwall Record Society, New Series, Vol.1, Torquay, 1955, pp.25–7, grant no.33