Family and Education

b. by 1525, 1st s. of Edward Penruddock of Arkleby, Cumb. by Elizabeth, da. of Robert Highmore of Armathwaite, Cumb.; bro. of George. m. Joyce, da. of John Charnells of Wishaw, Warws., s.p. suc. fa. by 1543.1

Offices Held

Gauger, port of Poole Feb. 1551; surveyor, ct. augmentations, Dorset Aug. 1552; chief steward, Exchequer, Som. and Dorset Feb. 1561; j.p. Hants 1558/59, q. 1561-4, j.p. Wilts. 1573/74-d.2

Biography

Of old Cumbrian stock, Robert Penruddock and his younger brother George both moved south. Granted a lease for 21 years of the office of gauger in Poole, Dorset, in February 1551, he became in the following year surveyor for the augmentations in Dorset and in 1561 chief steward of lands in Somerset and Dorset which had been under that court before its absorption by the Exchequer; in 1554-5 he was auditor of the lordships of James Blount, 6th Lord Mountjoy, in the same two counties and elsewhere. By 1555 he enjoyed the patronage of the lord treasurer, William Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, who in July of that year sponsored the grant to him of former monastic property in Wimborne All Saints, Dorset. A Paulet connexion is also reflected in Penruddock’s appearance on the pardon roll in 1559 as of Hale, for this property, later to be purchased by John Penruddock^†, was from 1564 in the hands of Winchester’s grandson, Lord Thomas Paulet. In June 1563 Penruddock was granted a lease of tithes in Morden, Dorset, partly in recognition of his service in that county.3

It was almost certainly Penruddock who sat for Cumberland in the two Parliaments of 1554, for his grandfather and namesake, if still alive, would have been at least in his mid 70s. Probably a kinsman both of his fellow-knight John Lee II and of Thomas Lee III, the sheriff who returned them, Penruddock could also have commended himself as one well placed to represent the local holders of monastic property in the current uncertainty about its future. He was not to sit again under Mary and after 1558 his religion stood in the way of his doing so. Brought onto the Hampshire commission of the peace at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, he was put off it after being adjudged in 1564 a ‘misliker or not favourer’ of the new orthodoxy, but was later appointed to the Wiltshire bench.4

Penruddock made his will on 10 Mar. 1579 when ‘weak and sick in body’. Although still at Hale, he asked to be buried in the chancel of Broad Chalk, Wiltshire, where he was lessee of the parsonage and his brother Sir George of the manor belonging to the earls of Pembroke. His wife Joyce and his nephew and godson Robert^† were to receive a delivery of wheat and barley every year for ten years out of the parsonage, but the lease itself went to another nephew, John, whom his uncle had already enfeoffed of all the Cumberland and Westmorland lands, subject to the widow’s jointure. Joyce and Robert Penruddock were given the lease of Hale and made residuary legatees and executors, with Sir George and John Penruddock as overseers as well as executors for the collection of debts. Penruddock died in 1583 and the will was proved on 8 Apr. of that year.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Alan Davidson

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from younger brother’s and from first reference, LP Hen. VIII, xxi. Vis. Cumb. (Harl. Soc. vii), 2; Wilts. Vis. Peds. (Harl. Soc. cv, cvi), 148; LP Hen. VIII, xviii.
• 2. CPR, 1553, p. 374; 1560-3, pp. 181, 442; 1563-6, pp. 26, 42; APC, iv. 109.
• 3. CPR, 1553, p. 374; 1555-7, p. 98; 1558-60, p. 202; 1560-3, pp. 181, 493-4; HMC Hastings, i. 350; VCH Hants, iv. 578; HMC Bath, iv. 133.
• 4. CPR, 1550-3, p. 9; 1563-6, p. 510; Req.2/36/30; Cam. Misc. ix(3), 56.
• 5. PCC 17 Rowe; VCH Hants, iv. 578.