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ARGALL, Richard (c.1533-88), of East Sutton, Kent and London.
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Biography Detail
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Constituency
Dates
Family and Education
b.c.1533, 1st s. of Thomas Argall of East Sutton, Exchequer official and registrar of the PCC, by Margaret, da. of John Tolkarne of Cornw. educ. I. Temple 1553. m. (1) by 1554, Joan, da. and coh. of Robert Martyn of Graveney, Kent; (2) Mary, da. of Sir Reginald Scott of Scot’s Hall, Kent, at least 5s. 6da. suc. fa. 1563.
Offices Held
J.p. Kent from c.1573.
Biography
Argall probably held a minor office in the ecclesiastical courts or in the Exchequer: he asked his ‘very loving friend’ Peter Osborne to act as overseer of his will, and it may have been to Osborne that he owed his return for Maldon in 1563, unless his patron was Sir Robert Dudley, soon to be Earl of Leicester, with whom he was corresponding by 1572. He had no property in Essex, residing in London and in Kent, where he inherited lands acquired by his father in Henry VIII’s reign and where he occupied estates in right of his first wife. He also inherited three manors in Dorset, though he never lived there. He or his brother Lawrence, registrar of the PCC, was a mourner at Archbishop Parker’s funeral on 6 June 1575. Argall was one of the justices who wrote to Burghley about abuses of purveyance in Kent in January 1584. He died on 18 Oct. 1588, having made his will that June. He entrusted his body to the earth until at Christ’s second coming it should be raised with those ‘predestined thereto long before the beginning of any worlds’, an indication of his puritan religious views. He was able to leave £300 to each of his five unmarried daughters and annuities to four younger sons. The eldest son Thomas was to share the executorship with the widow unless she remarried. The will was proved 12 Feb. 1589. There is a memorial to Argall and his second wife in East Sutton church.
C142/138/30; Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 518; CPR, 1550-3, p. 432; 1553-4, p. 10; 1558-60, p. 172; 1563-6, p. 5; London Mar. Lics. (Harl. Soc. xxv), 28; Hasted, Kent, v. 378; vi. 33-4; Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. lxxv), 30; J. Cave-Browne, Sutton Valence, 43; Arch. Cant. lxiv. 24; Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 518; Strype, Parker, ii. 432; Lansd. 39, f. 201; 117, f. 214; Seconde Parte of a Register ed. Peel, i. 115; PCC 25 Leicester.
