CROXHALE, Hugh, of Shaftesbury, Dorset.

At the time of his second return to Parliament Croxhale was engaged in the cloth trade, but he may not have remained a merchant all his life, for he was known later on as ‘gentleman’. His property in Shaftesbury included a tort which he sold in 1387, and his activities centred on the town, although he may have actually lived at his place at Melbury Abbas, some two miles away.E101/343/29; Dorset Feet of Fines, ii. 206, KB27/548 m. 10. In the spring of 1390 he was a juror at an inquiry into the possessions of the chantry of St. Anne in Shaftesbury abbey. He also witnessed several conveyances of property in the town, and at the beginning of his second mayoralty, at Michaelmas 1415, he stood bail before the Dorset bench for a local smith. In 1419 he was charged by the executors of John Gille in the court of common pleas with failure to render account to them as Gille’s receiver. Meanwhile, he had been one of the four delegates sent to Dorchester to report at the shire court the results of the Shaftesbury elections of 1410 and 1417. He later appeared in the same capacity, twice in 1421 and once again in 1425.C145/245/11; Egerton 3135, ff. 80v, 109; Harl. Ch. 78 D16; C258/40/33; CPR, 1416-22, p. 226; C219/10/5, 12/2, 5, 6, 13/3. John Croxhale, who with his wife Cecily held lands in East Pennard, Som. in 1409-10 and an inn in High Street, Shaftesbury, in 1429, may have been Hugh’s son: Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 34; Shaftesbury Recs. 23.