Hindon

A non-incorporated borough, Hindon was owned by the bishop of Winchester,4Hoare, Wilts. Mere; VCH Wilts. v. 118-19. who controlled the patronage there, entirely in the early part of this period, less so later. At the time of the elections to Elizabeth’s first Parliament the Marian bishop, White, had not yet been deprived, though he was under house arrest, and two civil lawyers, relatives, were returned. The 1563 Members were Bishop Horne’s agent (Foster) and his chancellor and son-in-law (Acworth). Richard Polsted, a Surrey country gentleman, and Miles Sandys (1571) were brought in by Horne but the latter preferred Lancaster, and his replacement, Dabridgecourt, was a Hampshire gentleman having no connexion with the bishop. Polsted, son-in-law of (Sir) William More I of Loseley, a friend of Bishop Horne, came in again next year, with Horne’s own son-in-law John Hales II, son of a Kent country gentleman. Polsted died before the end of the Parliament, but there is no evidence of a by-election. Horne’s successors had less influence on returns than he, and from 1584 to the end of this period the pattern is one episcopal nominee and one man from the local families of Marvyn and Zouche, with a slight reservation over the identity of Richard Zouche (1584). Further, as happened at Downton, the bishop of Winchester’s nominations tended to slip into the hands of Whitgift, whose civil lawyer Richard Cosin even came in for both places. John Lyly (1589) was a professional hack employed by Whitgift to counter Marprelate; Abraham Hartwell (1593) was Whitgift’s secretary; and George Paule (1601) another of his servants. Two odd men out were Henry Jackman (1597), a London cloth merchant, who may have had trading connexions with Hindon, and Thomas Thynne II, who had married a grand-daughter of (Sir) James Marvyn.