HUGGIS, Richard

The only evidence certainly relating to this very obscure MP is the schedule recording the names of the men elected for Wiltshire’s boroughs to the Parliament of 1449. The chances are that he was from Cricklade rather than an outsider, since there was at least one Richard Huggis residing in the borough in the latter part of Henry V’s reign. By 1420 Thomas Cricklade* had begun a suit in the court of common pleas against a baker of that name from Cricklade, for trespassing on his property at Great Chelworth. In the same period, Thomas Newyngton likewise sued Richard Huggis of Crickade for trespass in that court, although the plea roll identifies the defendant in Newyngton’s lawsuit as a ‘bocher’ rather than a baker.1 CP40/636, rots. 424d, 452d. There is no evidence to link Huggis with the Hugyns of Standlynch near Salisbury, a middle-ranking gentry family of whom Richard Hugyn was active in the mid 15th century: VCH Wilts. xi. 69; E179/196/118.