Family and Education

bap. 11 Aug. 1633, 2nd but 1st surv. s. of Theodore (Dierick) Hoste, merchant, of Pudding Lane, London and Mortlake, Surr. by Jane, da. of James Desmaistres, Brewer, of Pudding Lane, London. m. 27 Apr. 1658 (with £2,000), Elizabeth, da. of Edmund Sleigh, Mercer, of London, 1s. 3da. suc. fa. 1663.1

Offices Held

J.p. Norf. 1676-87, by 1690-?d., commr. for assessment 1677-80, 1689-90.2

Biography

On both sides Hoste was of Protestant refugee descent. His paternal grandfather fled from Flanders in 1568 and introduced the bleaching industry to Surrey. His father was an elder in the Dutch church, in which he was baptized, but as a merchant stranger took no part in English politics, though he was nominated to the London corporation for the poor by the Rump. Hoste was apprenticed to his other grandfather as a brewer, but probably did not serve out his time. By 1676 he had bought a Norfolk estate, valued at £2,000 p.a., and conformed to the Church of England. ‘Well-beloved’ in the neighbourhood, he was returned for Castle Rising, five miles from his home, to the three Exclusion Parliaments. Lord Yarmouth (Robert Paston I), who frequently visited him, hoped that he would support the Government, but Shaftesbury marked him ‘honest’, and he voted for the bill. Otherwise he left no trace on the records of Parliament. To Yarmouth’s surprise, he signed the loyal address abhorring the ‘Association’ in 1682, and was not removed from the commission of the peace until 1687. He was restored after the Revolution, but did not stand again, though his son, who married a sister of Robert Walpole, was active as a militia officer against the local Jacobites. He ‘shot himself through the head with a pistol in his closet’, and was buried at Sandringham on 30 July 1699. His grandson sat for Bramber on the government interest from 1728 to 1734.3

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Paula Watson

Notes

• 1. Reg. Dutch Church Austin Friars, 35; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xv), 395; Inhabitants of London in 1638 ed. Dale, 102; Mortlake Par. Reg. 22-27, 46, 72; Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. lx), 61.
• 2. Norf. Ltcy. Jnl. (Norf. Rec. Soc. xxx), 115.
• 3. W. Rye, Norf. Fams. 366; VCH Surr. ii. 368; J. H. Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, iii. 2277, 2463; Guildhall Lib. mss 5445/17; Blomefield, Norf. ix. 569; Works of Sir Thomas Browne ed. Wilkins, i. 233; CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 66; Add. 36988, ff. 180, 182; Norf. Ltcy. Jnl. 120; Luttrell, iv. 544.