♂Sir Thomas Hoo

Thomas Hoo (died 1380) was an English knight who fought for Edward III in France in 1346 and 1347, served the Crown as sheriff and escheator of Surrey and Sussex, and by his marriage to the heiress Isabel St. Leger brought her Sussex manors into the Hoo family. He was the eighteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son William Hoo (1335–1410).

Family and marriage

Thomas was the son of Hawise FitzWarin and almost certainly of her husband, Sir Robert Hoo, of a family that held land around Luton, at Hoo, Stopsley and West Hyde.

Thomas Hoo married Isabel St. Leger, the only child and heiress of Sir John St. Leger, before 31 May 1335. Her father had died in 1326, leaving her his estates in Sussex, Northamptonshire and Hertfordshire. On 31 May 1335 the king ordered the sheriff of Northamptonshire to deliver her estates to her, and she was by then the wife of Thomas Hoo; she was fifteen. Two years later Thomas obtained grants of free warren^W in his own family’s lordships and, by right of his wife’s Sussex lands, a Tuesday market and a yearly fair at Wartling and three-day fairs at Bucksteep and Dallington. In 1342 Thomas, Isabel and his mother, Dame Hawise, settled the manors of Offley and Wartling on the couple and their children, naming their sons Thomas and then William as heirs in turn.

In the king’s service

Thomas was with the king’s army at the Battle of Crécy^W in August 1346 and at the siege of Calais^W that followed, which ended with the town’s surrender the next year. Back in England he was sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1348 and again in 1358, and from 16 May 1349 to 18 November 1351 he was the escheator^W of the two counties, the king’s officer who took into the Crown’s hands the lands of its tenants when they died. In 1356 he was granted free warren in all his Sussex manors. He is also said to have sat in Parliament for Bedfordshire as a knight of the shire^W.

Later life and death

In February 1373 Thomas, a knight, and his son William acknowledged a debt of £300 to William Gunthorpe, a clerk, before the Mayor of the Staple^W at Westminster. He also held lands at Wartling, the manor that came to him with Isabel.

Their sons were Thomas, William, Robert and John; William, the second son but the eldest to survive, succeeded his father. Thomas is said to have died in 1380 and was buried at St Albans Abbey^W. Isabel outlived him by thirteen years. She died in 1393 and was buried with her husband at St Albans.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son William, William’s daughter Margaret Hoo, Margaret’s daughter Edith Saint Clair (born about 1423), Edith’s daughter Alice Harcourt (died 1526), Alice’s daughter Elizabeth Bessiles, Elizabeth’s daughter Anne Fettiplace, Anne’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s 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

Sources for his life

His marriage, the grants of free warren, the market and fairs, and his later service are from W. D. Cooper, “Notices of the Family of Hoo”, Sussex Archaeological Collections 8 (1856), pp. 104–106, who cites the Patent Rolls for the grants and for the writ of 31 May 1335. Cooper makes him sheriff of Surrey and Sussex for six years, 1348–50 and 1356–58; the sheriffs’ accounts in the National Archives (E 358/2 and E 358/5) cover the years 22 and 32 Edward III, and his escheator’s file (E 153/1973) runs from 16 May 1349 to 18 November 1351. His seat for Bedfordshire rests on Cooper alone, who takes it from Willis’s Notitia Parliamentaria.

The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, under Hoo, Note A, p. 565) gives the marriage “before 16 June 1335, at which date she was aged 15”, the settlement of Offley and Wartling by a fine of Hilary term, 16 Edward III, and the burial at St Albans Abbey, citing the Annals of St Albans (Rolls Series, vol. 1, p. 442). It says that he “fought at Crécy and Calais”, citing George Wrottesley’s Crécy and Calais (William Salt Society, vol. 18, p. 36).

His parentage

The Complete Peerage shows Hawise as his mother from a grant to “Dame Hawise de Hoo and Thomas de Hoo, her son” of 6 January 1328/9 and a release of her dower in West Hyde, Luton, to Sir Thomas and his mother of 11 March 1330/1, both in the Harleian roll of Hoo deeds. Cooper calls him the son of the Robert who married Hawise FitzWarin. The deeds name Hawise as Thomas’s mother; Robert’s fatherhood follows from Thomas’s name and the Hoo lands he held.

His death

The year of his death, 1380, is from F. N. Craig, “Maternal Ancestry of Governor Thomas Dudley: Hoo, St. Omer, Malmains, St. Leger, Fitzwarin and Andevill Lines”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 140 (1986), p. 219. Cooper (p. 106) gives the day, 18 September 1380.

His sons

The fine of 1342 names the sons Thomas and William, and a grant of 1345 to Sir Thomas, Isabel and their son Thomas names William and Robert as his brothers. The Complete Peerage calls William the “2nd but eldest surviving” son. Cooper (p. 106) names only two sons, John Hoo of Knebworth, who died without children, and William.

The debt of 1373

The knighthood and the debt come from the National Archives description of a certificate of statute staple, which describes a recognizance taken on 14 February 1373 before William de Walworth, Mayor of the Staple of Westminster, in which “Thomas de Hoo, knight” and “William de Hoo, his son, of Sussex” were the debtors of £300 to William Gunthorpe, clerk. Two further entries carry the same description for 1373 to 1374. The description gives Thomas fees at Wartling and Socknersh in Foxearle Hundred, Sussex; Cooper (p. 105) identifies Wartling as Isabel St. Leger’s manor, so the debtor is the same man. The record calls William his son.