The Hacches were a middling gentry family from north-eastern Devon, who took their name from the family seat in the parish of South Molton. John’s father, Robert, died in 1405 holding estates valued at more than £29 p.a., including the manors of Hacche, Romansleigh and Leigh Barton. At the time, John was just 11 years old.
The earl’s unexpected death may have deprived Hacche of a patron, and may at least in part explain why over the course of a lifetime of over 70 years he failed entirely to attract any form of Crown office. He was nevertheless of some standing in his locality, for he was frequently empanelled on local juries, often heading the lists of names. In particular, he was called upon as a juror in inquiries post mortem into the landed estates of the greatest men in the shire. That of the earl of Devon aside, juries he thus headed included those summoned after the deaths of Isabel, countess of Warwick (d.1439), Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick (d.1446), and Thomas Carminowe*,
Such connexions may go some way to explain John’s sole return to Parliament as a knight of the shire for Devon in the autumn of 1449, but it is probable that his candidature was also agreeable to Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, son of Hacche’s old patron. Following his protracted minority, in the 1440s Courtenay had asserted his family’s traditional dominance in the south-west, and as a result of his local rivalry with William, Lord Bonville*, and the latter’s principal supporter, Sir James Butler, promoted earl of Wiltshire in July 1449, had increasingly placed himself in opposition to the court party around William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. In preparation for a concerted parliamentary attack on the court, Devon and other lords critical of the conduct of the French wars sought to have their retainers returned to the Commons, and Courtenay in particular was successful in securing a string of west-country seats.
If Hacche indeed owed his election to the earl of Devon, he does not appear to have allowed himself to be drawn into the campaign of open violence that Courtenay unleashed across the south-west from 1451 to 1455. Indeed, following his return from Parliament he appears once again to have withdrawn into private life, which in his case was punctuated only by minor disputes with individuals of generally low standing. Thus, in 1439 he had sued two artisans from Plympton Erle for breaking into his property at Tavistock, while there were repeated quarrels with his tenants at South Molton over trespasses they were said to have committed.
When Hacche died on 4 Sept. 1477, his eldest son and heir, John, had been dead for nine months, leaving a six-year-old son, Thomas, as heir.