♂Robert Hoo

Robert Hoo (died before 1345) was an English knight who married the widowed Hawise FitzWarin and, with her, held land at Bloxham in wardship for the heir of her first husband, her own daughter Margaret de Goushill. He was the nineteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Thomas Hoo (died 1380).

Family

Robert was probably the son of Sir Robert Hoo and Beatrice de Andeville, of a family that held land around Luton, at Hoo, Stopsley and West Hyde. On 30 November 1310 he had a grant of land in Luton as the son of Sir Robert de Hoo.

Marriage

By 18 May 1308 Robert had married Hawise FitzWarin, the widow of Ralph de Goushill. That year the two of them held land at Bloxham as guardians of the heir of Ralph de Goushill, Hawise’s own daughter Margaret. Such a wardship^W, with the profits of the heir’s lands until the heir came of age, was valuable and often went to outsiders; this one stayed with the child’s mother. Robert was almost certainly the father of Hawise’s son, Thomas Hoo, who later held land jointly with his mother. Robert had evidently died before 1345, when a grant names Hawise as his “late wife”.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Thomas Hoo, Thomas’s son William Hoo (1335–1410), and William’s daughter Margaret Hoo, whose descendants include Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

His parentage

The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, under Hoo, Note A) begins the family with the Sir Robert de Hoo who had a grant of free warren on 4 May 1292 in Hartford Hoo, Stopsley and Maulden in Bedfordshire and in manors in Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire, and to whom, with “Beatrice his wife”, land in West Hyde was granted the same year. It then records that “His s., Sir Robert de Hoo, as s. of Sir Robert de Hoo had a grant in Luton 30 Nov. 1310”, citing the Harleian roll of Hoo deeds. That Beatrice was the younger Robert’s mother rests on her being his father’s wife in 1292; F. N. Craig, “Maternal Ancestry of Governor Thomas Dudley”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 140 (1986), pp. 219–229, gives the same descent.

His marriage

The inquisition of 1 Edward II (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 8, no. 692) shows “Robert de Hoo and Hawis his wife” holding Bloxham in the wardship of the heir of Ralph de Goushull, under a commission of 18 May 1308. The Complete Peerage (under Goushill) names that heir as Ralph’s infant daughter Margaret, born in 1294, and says his widow “appears to have m., 2ndly, Robert de Hoo”, citing the same inquisition and the Feudal Aids of 1303 (Lincoln, p. 149); the marriage may therefore be as early as 1303.

His son

The Complete Peerage writes that “By Sir Robert de Hoo, Hawise was mother of Sir Thomas Hoo”, on the strength of a grant to “Dame Hawise de Hoo and Thomas de Hoo, her son” of 6 January 1328/9 and a release of dower in West Hyde, Luton, to Sir Thomas and his mother of 11 March 1330/1. The deeds name Hawise as Thomas’s mother; Robert’s fatherhood follows from Thomas’s name and the Hoo lands he held.

His death

His death before 1345 is taken from a grant of the manor of Dunsby, Lincolnshire, in 1345 to “Hawise de Goushill, late wife of Sir Robert de Hoo” (Complete Peerage, vol. 6, Hoo, Note A). Craig gives his death as 1340.