POOLE, Henry (1590-1645), of Sapperton, Glos.

The Pooles, said to be of Cheshire origin, were established in Wiltshire in the early fifteenth century,19 Thorp, 200. and first entered Parliament in 1442; they acquired Sapperton ‘a brave sweet seat and gallant park’ some four miles from Cirencester,20 Richard Symonds’s Diary of Marches of Royal Army ed. C.E. Long (Cam. Soc. lxxiv), 30. at the end of the century. Poole’s grandfather and father both sat for the county and the latter, shortly before his death, bought the manor and the Seven Hundreds of Cirencester from the 1st Lord Danvers. Poole inherited lands in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire worth over £2,000 a year,21 Thorp, 200, 213, 220. and received a grant of free warren in 1618.22 C66/2166/12. He obtained a licence to travel in the summer of 1620, and may have been abroad when Parliament was summoned later that year.

Poole was returned for Cirencester on his own interest in 1624 and 1625. After failing to leave any mark on the records of either Parliament the borough elected his brother-in-law, Sir Neville Poole, in 1626. In the following year he was purged from the bench and imprisoned in the Gatehouse for his ‘peremptory’ opposition to the Forced Loan. After further confinement at Abingdon, he was released early in 1628.23 SP16/56/70; APC, 1627, pp. 374, 449; 1627-8, p. 217. Three years later he compounded for knighthood at £50.24 E401/2450. In 1634 he was accused of ‘interrupting’ shrieval jurisdiction in certain Gloucestershire hundreds,25 PC2/43, f. 479. and he was removed from the bench for six weeks in 1637 for refusing to pay Ship Money.26 CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 406. He took the king’s side in the Civil War, and though his services were deemed worthy of a baronetcy the patent never passed the seals.27 CCC, 1050; Thorp, 223. His will, dated 31 July 1645, was proved in London on 28 Nov. following.28 PROB 11/194, f. 196. His son William mortgaged the estates, which were sold to (Sir) Robert Atkyns† in 1667.29 Thorp, 223-36. The manor of Cirencester, however, was carried by Poole’s daughter by his second marriage to her Scottish husband, James Livingston 1st earl of Newburgh, who sat for the borough in the Cavalier Parliament.