Family and Education

s. of Richard Cabell of Frome Selwood by his w. Thomasine. educ. M. Temple 1585. m. Susan, da. of John Peter of Buckfastleigh, 2s. 3da.

Offices Held

Constable, Frustfield hundred, Wilts. 1576-7, from 1580.

Biography

Cabell, a servant of Sir John Thynne, established his family on estates in Devon and North Wiltshire, where in the 1570s he was trustee for some of the Thynne property, and it was presumably Thynne who obtained Cabell’s return for Heytesbury. In 1571 a Christopher Doddington suggested by Hawker, the borough owner, stood down in Cabell’s favour; the arrangement was evidently amicable, and three years later, Cabell was a witness of Hawker’s will. It is not known how Cabell came to be returned at Minehead in 1572. In the third session of this Parliament he was appointed to a committee for the inning of Plumstead marshes, 8 Mar. 1581. He died 13 Feb. 1613. In his will, made 28 Aug. 1610 and proved 5 May 1613, he acknowledged that earthly life was ‘but a pilgrimage or place of passage’, and goods and possessions mere necessities, provided by God, for a journey through this ‘vale of misery’. He left 200 marks apiece to his younger children and one third of his lands to his son and heir Richard, who subsequently became a man of some wealth. During the seventeenth century, the family displayed every shade of religious belief from Roman Catholicism to extreme nonconformity.

Vivian, Vis. Devon, 125; Mins. Proc. Sess. ed. Johnson (Wilts. Rec. Soc. iv); Wilts. N. and Q. iv. 560; vii. 114, 155; Som. Rec. Soc. li. 144-5; Two 16th Cent. Lists, ed. Ramsey (Wilts. Rec. Soc. x), 115; Trans. Dev. Assoc. xvi. 494; xxxi. 129-40; xlv. 452-3; PCC 39 Capell; CJ, i. 132; VCH Wilts. iii. 89; Cath. Rec. Soc. xviii. 351.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: W.J.J.

Notes