HALL, Robert I (by 1475-1536), of Ore, Suss.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1475, 1st s. of Henry Hall of Ore by Anne, da. of John Stokton. m. (1) by 1496, Anne, da. of John Dudley, 2s. 1da.; (2) Anne, da. of Roger Fiennes, 2s. 4da.2

Offices Held

Bailiff, Hastings 1512-13; bailiff to Yarmouth 1514; commr. subsidy, Hastings 1514, sewers, Suss. 1515.3

Biography

Like his father, Robert Hall was usually styled ‘esquire’, and his first marriage was calculated to enhance his social standing: although she does not appear in the Dudley pedigree, his wife was probably a granddaughter of the 6th Baron Dudley and thus sister to Edmund Dudley. The course of Hall’s career shows that he was not harmed by the death of his kinsman. He may have sat in the Parliament of 1504, of which Dudley was Speaker, or in that of 1510 which attainted the fallen minister— the names of the Members for Hastings on both occasions being lost— and he almost certainly did so in 1515 in accordance with the King’s request for the re-election of the previous Members; it was probably on his return from the first session of this Parliament, which ended on 5 Apr., that he came to the Easter meeting of the Brotherhood of the Cinque Ports bearing a writ for the removal of his current dispute with the bailiff and jurats of Tenterden into the court of common pleas. He is readily identified as a member of local commissions, but the Robert Hall who attended the funeral of Prince Henry in 1511 as a yeoman may have been one of his many namesakes.4

Hall held the manors of Gensing, Guestling and Ore, with various neighbouring properties, but he conveyed most of his lands, probably at the time of his second marriage, to feoffees who included his wife’s kinsmen Thomas Fiennes, 8th Lord Dacre, and Sir Goddard Oxenbridge. His connexion with Calais may have been strengthened by the marriage of Edmund Dudley’s widow to the deputy, Viscount Lisle: in 1536 he was the bearer of a letter to Lisle from the deputy’s agent at court John Hussee, and in the same year his grandson Richard Lee was appointed surveyor of Calais. Hall died on 31 Dec. 1536, leaving a son William aged 40 and more as his heir.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Patricia Hyde

Notes

  • 1. Add. 34150, f. 136.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from marriage. Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. liii), II.
  • 3. Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. (Kent Arch. Soc. recs. br. xix), 149-51, 156; LP Hen. VIII, i, ii.
  • 4. Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. ix(2), 1-149; Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. 157, 211, 214; LP Hen. VIII, i.
  • 5. C142/67/137; LP Hen. VIII, add.