Family and Education

b. by 1531, prob. s. of John Polle of Leominster by Maud.1

Offices Held

Capital burgess, Leominster 1554, bailiff 1555-6.2

Biography

John Polle’s place in his family, a leading one at Leominster, is not altogether clear. His return to the first Marian Parliament as John Polle ‘senior’ distinguishes him from his namesake who appears on subsidy rolls and elsewhere as ‘baker’ and suggests that he was the elder of the two sons of that name who were mentioned in the will of John Polle ‘the elder’, made on 3 June 1550 and proved on 30 Apr. 1552: John Polle ‘baker’ was an overseer of this will. The elder of these sons was bequeathed a Leominster burgage on condition that he ‘apply himself to help me and my wife in our business and trouble when he shall be required and so that he do not disturb nor disquiet my executors’. It was evidently this testator who had been assessed as John Polle senior on £15 in goods for the subsidy of 1543 but nine years later it was probably the two brothers who, as John Polle senior and junior, were each assessed on £10 in goods. There is nothing to show which of these brothers (if either) was the John Polle of Leominster who made his will on 25 May 1578.3

Little else is known of Polle, although his leading place in the borough under Mary suggests that he was the ‘Mr. Polle’, merchant, who in the reign of Edward VI acted for Leominster in negotiations with the city of Gloucester over free passage on the river Severn.Neither Polle nor his fellow-Member William Strete ‘stood for the true religion’ against the initial measures to restore Catholicism.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: P. S. Edwards

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from subsidy assessment. PCC 12 Powell.
• 2. CPR, 1553-4, p. 396; G. F. Townsend, Leominster, 293.
• 3. C219/21/72; PCC 12 Powell; Townsend, 54, 71, 76, 83, 258; E179/117/218, 237/40; NLW Hereford consist. ct. wills box 10, Po(1).
• 4. Townsend, 50-52.