POOLE, Sir Henry (1564-1632), of Kemble and Oaksey, Wilts. and Merton, Oxon.

Poole belonged to a cadet branch of the Poole family of Sapperton in Gloucestershire. His house at Kemble lay close to the Gloucestershire/Wiltshire border, but the bulk of his extensive estates were in Wiltshire. VCH Wilts. xiv. 57. For several generations his ancestors had leased the manors of Poole, Chelworth, Crudwell, and Oaksey, all in north Wiltshire, from the duchy of Lancaster; however, Poole manor was challenged as ‘concealed land’ and had passed out of his possession by the turn of the seventeenth century. HMC Hatfield, xxiii. 97; xxiv. 257. During the 1590s Poole fought a protracted struggle against Sir Henry Knyvet†, the leader of a puritanical faction among the Wiltshire gentry, over his inheritance of Kemble manor, as Poole’s maternal grandmother had broken her husband’s entail and granted her life-interest in part of this estate to Knyvet. The ensuing quarrel, which resulted in numerous Star Chamber cases, was ended only by Knyvet’s death in 1598. A. Wall, ‘Faction in Local Pols. 1580-1620’, Wilts. Arch. Mag. lxxii/lxxiii. 119-33; HMC Hatfield, vi. 404. This experience had a formative effect upon Poole’s later parliamentary career, as he subsequently often opposed private legislation that sought to break entails or threatened the inheritance of minors. Indeed, Poole is a prime example of a Member who considered that Parliament’s main function was to protect the interests of landowners and redress local grievances. Consequently, in all five parliaments in which he sat he promoted legislation on behalf of the clothing and wool industries that were the mainstay of the local economy in his region. The only area of high politics that did engage his interest was the Union with Scotland, in which he exhibited a persistent anti-Scottish bias. Otherwise, he favoured both electoral reform, to ensure that the Commons was more genuinely representative, and measures to combat absenteeism.

In 1604 Poole, who had hitherto served in only one Parliament, was elected with his kinsman Sir John Hungerford for the Wiltshire borough of Cricklade, where he owned property, and where he may also have enjoyed the patronage of his distant kinsman, the 5th Baron Chandos (Grey Brydges†). VCH Wilts. v. 131. During the opening session he played little recorded part in proceedings, although he subsequently became one of the Parliament’s most active Members. W. Notestein, Commons 1604-10, pp. 2, 217. On 24 Mar. he was named to consider the continuing laws expiry bill, and seven days later he was appointed to the committee for the bill to exclude debtors from the Commons (31 March). CJ, i. 152b, 160b. In his first known speech, on 26 June, he vouched for Hungerford’s soundness in religion. Ibid. 998a. Three days later he spoke on a bill concerning the inheritance of his wife’s nephew Sir Henry Neville II*. Ibid. 1000a. His two further committee appointments concerned matters of local interest, namely a bill to make rivers navigable (23 June), which was described by one unknown Member as a ‘fox-faced bill, only bent at the earl of Worcester’, and a private measure to enable Sir Christopher Hatton* to recover his Northamptonshire estates (29 June). Ibid. 245a, 249a.

Poole made a greater mark in the second session. On 24 Jan. 1606 he was added to the committee to consider a measure requiring all travellers overseas to take the Oath of Supremacy before their departure. Ibid. 259a. In ‘a laboured speech’ on 31 Jan. he praised Lord Monteagle for discovering the Gunpowder Plot, and made the suggestion, described by Bowyer as ‘far-fetched’, that a clause should be inserted in the general recusancy bill to commemorate Monteagle’s ‘desert’. Bowyer Diary, 16; CJ, i. 262a. However, it was immediately objected that this might offend James, who deserved the ultimate credit for foiling the plot. Poole was appointed to a conference with the Lords to review the laws against recusancy on 6 February. CJ, i. 263a. He further contributed to debate on the subject on 25 Mar., when he offered ‘a ridiculous proviso’, perhaps inspired by the Catholic sympathies of his in-laws, ‘that a man conformable shall not be answerable for his wife’s recusancy’. Bowyer Diary, 91. His position as a moderate in religion was underlined on 17 Feb., when he suggested inserting a time limit in the Sabbath bill. CJ, i. 269b.

A member of the committee to consider a bill to restore kerseys to ‘their old accustomed measure of 24 yards or thereabouts’, Poole urged ‘the reason of the bill of spinsters and weavers, and the reading of it’ on 13 February. Ibid. 264a, 267b. He reported this bill, which sought to regulate wages in the industry, on 10 Mar., and henceforward maintained the strong interest in the cloth industry natural in a Wiltshire Member, taking the chair for a bill to promote the export of coloured cloth undressed, which he reported on 24 March. Ibid. 281b, 288b. He was among those who demanded a conference ‘to bury the name of purveyors’ (18 Feb.), and spoke several times upon their abuses; he was wary of the proposed compositions, which he compared on 8 Mar. to a game of tennis, that would ‘hazard; some over line, some under’. Ibid. 270a, 273b, 278a, 280b; Bowyer Diary, 60. He also expected the king to ‘stay his bounty’ if compositions ever went ahead, as he argued on 11 March. CJ, i. 282b. Poole was among the majority of MPs who believed that if royal spending was more carefully controlled, parliamentary taxation would suffice without the need for the king to resort to prerogative sources of revenue such as impositions and purveyance. Consequently, during the subsidy debate of 14 Mar. he urged the House to grant supply ‘for our own sakes’, warning that if they failed to vote money ‘what will not Need do? what will not importunity do?’. Ibid. 266a, 284b. Five days later he was named to consider a bill against impositions upon merchants (19 March). He was added to the committee for the free trade bill on 10 April. Ibid. 287a, 296a.

Poole was appointed to consider several private bills, among them one which aimed to restore his Wiltshire friend Henry, Lord Danvers (13 Mar.), who had been outlawed for murder in 1594, and another to settle Lord Chandos’ estate (7 April). Ibid. 283b, 294b. However he was not always a friend to the aristocracy. When grievances were debated on 16 Apr. he accused the 1st earl of Hertford of abusing his office as lord lieutenant by the appointment of his secretary as muster-master of Somerset and Wiltshire and by the imposition of a tax for his maintenance. Poole appealed to Speaker Phelips, and the House agreed upon the question that the matter should be proceeded with as a grievance. Ibid. 299a; Bowyer Diary, 130. On 10 May he produced a letter from the Wiltshire justices of the peace complaining about Hertford who, he asserted, would have hanged a gentleman in Somerset for not contributing to the muster-master’s pay, ‘if others had not entreated the contrary’. He established his reputation as a parliamentary wit in this speech ‘whereat the House laughed greatly, as liking and being well pleased with his pleasant conclusion’. CJ, i. 307b; Bowyer Diary, 155-6. However, Hertford complained to the Privy Council that ‘misconceits spread abroad amongst the vulgar’ had brought dishonour to himself and reputation to Poole, who was consequently removed from the Wiltshire commission of the peace. Hertford Ltcy. Pprs. 31, 38, 39, 46, 64, 107-8; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 271-2; Wall, ‘Faction’, 127-31. As the session drew to a close and attendance dwindled, Poole finally began to assume a more prominent role. He became a stalwart committee workhorse, and helped present the king with the House’s grievances on 14 May. CJ, i. 309a. He also spoke more frequently in debate, and on a wide range of subjects, though his suggestions were not always welcome. Indeed, on 26 May, the day before the prorogation, Poole gave offence when he advised that the Lords should be consulted on how to proceed against Bishop Parker for preaching an inappropriate sermon. Ibid. 313a.

When the House reassembled for the third session in the following autumn, Poole took an active role in the main topic of debate, the proposed Union with Scotland. After attending the conference with the Lords on 25 Nov. 1606, he declared that ‘the name [Great Britain] is comfortable, to avoid discord and hostility, and Union a good work if we may effect it’. However, like many of his colleagues he had deep misgivings about the Union, which he described as ‘an innovation’ that ‘deserveth a great consideration’. Following the lead of Richard Martin*, he proposed that the issues involved should be ‘divided into four branches’, each of which should be considered on a separate day. Bowyer Diary, 193; Harl. 6850, f. 55v. One of his principal concerns was to prevent naturalized Scots from obtaining seats in the Westminster Parliament, but whereas Nicholas Fuller was prepared to say this openly, Poole used the bill to naturalize a French physician named Peter Baro as a stalking horse instead. This tactic maddened Dudley Carleton*, who in a letter to John Chamberlain accused Poole of slipping ‘out of a private bill for the naturalizing of a French doctor into a large discourse of the Union’. SP14/24/23; Bowyer Diary, 203n. At the end of his speech Poole moved ‘that it might be entered for a general order, that none naturalized should be capable of place in Parliament’. CJ, i. 328a, 1007b. Four days later he reported the Baro bill and again pressed that it should contain the exclusion clause. Ibid. 329b. It was recommitted, but even after Poole reported agreement on the proviso on 13 Dec. it was stayed ‘until there were some further proceeding in the general case of naturalization’. Ibid. 330b, 1019b. When the Lords asked for a conference ‘about naturalization in general’ on 4 Mar. 1607, Poole adjured the House ‘not to deal in enigmas and allegories, but to say plainly ... what our opinion is’. CJ, i. 1026a. For many Members this was an unwelcome attempt to force the House to declare its position on the legal question, and therefore the debate was skilfully redirected by Sir Henry Montagu. Bowyer Diary, 212n. Poole approved of the wrecking proposal made on 28 Apr. by Sir Edwin Sandys for a ‘perfect Union’, and was described on 9 May as ‘the greatest opponent’ of plans for the abolition of hostile laws. CJ, i. 1036b; Bowyer Diary, 262, 383. Certainly he raised the problem of ‘remanding’ in felony cases on 28 May. CJ, i. 1047b. On 4 June James sent word that the Commons had misunderstood the Scottish legal system, and requested that the hostile laws bill committee to reconsider the issue of witnesses’ evidence in felony trials; but Poole opposed any change on the ground that it ‘was now out of the power of the committee to alter or vary from that which they have formerly done’. Bowyer Diary, 310-11. Even as the end of the session became imminent, Poole continued to debate the hostile laws bill, calling for another conference of both Houses on 13 June. Ibid. 328.

By now Poole had become such a regular debater that he was mentioned in the satirical ‘Parliament Fart’. J. Mennes, Musarum Deliciae (repr. 1985), pp. 67-8; Add. 34218, f. 20. He chaired committees for bills to prohibit forcible entries (18 Feb. 1607) and to endow a grammar school at Northleach in Gloucestershire (28 February). CJ, i. 337a, 344a, 348b, 350a, 354a, 1032a, 1040b. On 27 Feb., in response to a royal message, he recommended legislation to enforce Members to attend the Commons more regularly; he spoke in the debate on the first reading of the bill on 4 Mar., and was named to the committee. Ibid. 347a, 1022a. A week later, as the circuits continued to drain lawyers from the Commons, Poole moved that none should depart without leave, or without paying his charitable dues to the collectors appointed by the House. Bowyer Diary, 228. On 15 May he called for additional members to be appointed to the committee for a bill concerning charges for legal copies, and he again requested, on 9 June, that replacements be found ‘in lieu of members ... who are out of town’. He moved to exclude from this committee ‘parties and officers’ - a term that became one of his stock phrases - but his motion was rejected. CJ, i. 1044b; Bowyer Diary, 322. On 15 May Poole was placed in charge of a committee for considering a petition from the Armourers Company against the monopolist Edmund Nicholson. CJ, i. 369b, 1044b, 1050a. On 11 June he suggested that since time was running out in the present session, a bill concerning the Armourers’ grievances should be drafted for consideration in the next. When this was overruled as ‘against the order of the House’, he desired instead ‘that the Lords be moved to write their letters in to the countries to set men at liberty to buy [arms] where they can best’. Bowyer Diary, 322; CJ, i. 382b. On 23 June it was agreed, upon Poole’s motion, that a bill for the Armourers’ relief should be drafted, taking into consideration ‘the course held in ordinary taxes and impositions upon the country, for maintenance of war, and provisions incident’. CJ, i. 387a.

As in the second session, Poole continued to show a lively interest in the clothing industry, and was one of the speakers in a heated debate on a bill ‘for the true making of woollen cloth’ on 11 May. Ibid. 372a, 1043a. Named to numerous committees for private measures, Poole devoted particular attention to the bill to sell William Waller’s lands to pay a debt, which had failed to complete its passage in the previous two sessions. Added to the committee on 6 Mar., he declared his opposition to the bill eight days later, when he also criticized the committee’s proceedings. On 30 Mar. he called for counsel for Waller to be heard ‘at large’. Ibid. 349b, 1031a, 1034b. Poole’s grounds for objecting to the Waller land bill are unknown, but it may have reflected his own bitter experience over the inheritance of Kemble manor. Though he was no lawyer, he often vehemently opposed private bills for the sale of lands contrary to preceding entails or jointures. On 6 May, for instance, he participated in a ‘long argument’ concerning the estate bill of William Cardinal, which was rejected at second reading. Ibid. 370a. Moreover, on 22 June, after it had been agreed that a Berkshire estate bill should ‘sleep’ till the next session, Poole and three others were ordered on 22 June to ‘treat’ with the promoter, William Essex, and his creditors, and to make a survey of the lands in preparation for a new bill. Ibid. 386b. It seems likely that Poole’s admission as a mature student at Lincoln’s Inn in 1608 owed something at least to an interest in such matters.

In the fourth session Poole’s first appointment was to attend the supply conference with the Lords on 15 Feb. 1610. On the following day he moved for the collection ‘of such public bills as were committed, laboured in, and approved the last session’. Ibid. 393b, 394a. He was the first named to a committee to consider the refurbished William Essex land bill (16 Feb.), and on 23 Feb. requested a protection to enable one of the witnesses in the case to give evidence, though this was denied. Ibid. 394b, 398b. In the debate on the Great Contract of 19 Feb. he observed: ‘we are promised great measure’; but he wanted to know from the Lords ‘some particulars of their demands’ put forward by lord treasurer Salisbury (Robert Cecil†) at the conference. Ibid. 397a. His huge number of committee appointments included bills to prevent the double payment of debts (20 Feb.) and to ensure the repayment of loans secured on lands later entailed (22 February). Ibid. 397b, 398b. He was the first named to consider a private bill to enable one Henry Pole, perhaps a kinsman, to sell lands in order to pay a debt (22 February). Ibid. 398b. He again took the chair for the forcible entries bill (24 Feb.), which had failed to pass the Lords in the previous session. Ibid. 399a. It was ordered to be engrossed on 7 Mar., but another bill revived from 1607, concerning charges for legal copies, Poole reported as fit to ‘sleep’ on 27 March. Ibid. 407a, 415a. As in the previous session, Poole became anxious about absenteeism, and moved on 1 Mar. to prevent lawyers from leaving town to go on circuit. Ibid. 403a. Though he does not appear to have been involved in the committee for a bill to fine absentees, Poole played a leading role in a sub-committee to consider allowances paid to messengers sent to recall errant Members (14 May). Ibid. 428a, 435b, 436a, 437a; C.R. Kyle, ‘Attendance Lists’, PPE 1604-40 ed. Kyle, 184-5. He reported from the privileges committee on 13 June that a rate had been set to fine those who were summoned by pursuivants, and two days later, as the summer assizes approached, he repeated his earlier plea for lawyers’ attendance to be enforced. CJ, i. 437a, 440a. He acted as a teller in divisions for private bills concerning the legacies of Sir Hugh Platt (10 Mar.), Sir Thomas Rous’s estates (24 May), outlawry (15 June), and a question of whether women and recusants should be included in the provisions of the Oath of Allegiance (4 July). Ibid. 408b, 432a, 439b, 445b.

Poole maintained his usual vigilance in the interests of the clothiers in his constituency, attacking a bill ‘against deceits in wools’, which was rejected on its first reading (23 May 1610). Ibid. 431a. In response to a royal message on 14 June promising redress of grievances, he commented that ‘a prince’s word in full Parliament’ was ‘somewhat’, and was one of those who favoured the modest grant of one subsidy and two fifteenths. Ibid. 439a, 448a; Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, ii. 144n; Notestein, 342. On 7 July he was ordered to attend the king to deliver the grievances. Procs. 1610, ii. 254. After amendment in committee he reported a bill to settle the estate of his brother-in-law Edward, Lord Bergavenny, on 12 July. CJ, i. 449a. Poole took charge of arrangements to appoint ten Members to conduct a survey for the New River project, though he himself was not among the group named on 16 July. Ibid. 442a, 445a, 450a. On 21 July he moved that, during the forthcoming summer recess, Members should sound out their constituents on the proposal to compensate the Crown for the loss of feudal revenues. CJ, i. 453b, Procs. 1610, ii. 292n. Nothing has come to light concerning his role in the short fifth session.

In 1613 Poole and 60 other knights were sued in the Court of Requests by Robert Redhead on behalf of numerous court officials for knighthood fines. The knights, from each of whom was demanded £20 13s. 4d., included Sir Hugh Beeston*, Sir William Button*, Sir Robert Crane*, Sir John Cutts*, Sir John Ferrers*, Sir Henry Goodyer*, Sir Ralph Grey*, Sir William Hervey*, Sir William Lovelace*, Sir William Lower*, Sir Richard Tichborne*, Sir Walter Tichborne*, Sir Henry Townsend*, Sir Henry Widdrington*, and Sir John Wentworth*; but it was Poole who took the lead in resisting the suit, filing an answer to Redhead’s charges, in which he argued that the patent, dated 31 May 1604, had been obtained under the false pretence that various ‘ancient and accustomed fees’ were payable upon receipt of knighthoods. In any case, Poole maintained, such fees could not apply to knighthoods conferred before the patent was granted. REQ 2/393/109. In March 1614 Poole served on the commission for the Cockayne project, a scheme intended to stimulate economic growth by fostering the dyeing and dressing of cloth for export, rather than the traditional production of unfinished cloth; it seems unlikely he would have supported the project, but was chosen simply to defend the interests of the West country clothiers as he had done previously in Parliament. HMC Downshire, iv. 338.

In the 1614 Parliament Poole represented Wiltshire, while his son Sir Neville sat for Malmesbury. On 20 Apr. he reintroduced the forcible entries bill, later remarking bitterly that it ‘had passed this House twice already, but could find no favour in the Upper House’. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 109, 115, 399. He was the first named to the committee to consider the bill on 31 May. Ibid. 394. On 2 May Poole complained of the time wasted discussing the rumour of a secret ‘undertaking’ to manage the Parliament on behalf of the king, and pleaded with his colleagues ‘not always to dwell upon these uncertainties ... especially now the time approacheth for the great business of the kingdom’. Ibid. 121, 125. He was further galled by the Stockbridge election controversy, and argued on 10 May that the abuses committed by the chancellor of the Duchy, Sir Thomas Parry*, who had secured the return of his nominees by force, should be referred to a committee, so that the Commons could proceed with legislation. Ibid. 192, 198. Poole was named to the committee to prepare for a conference on impositions (5 May), Ibid. 151. but on the whole had little time for ‘great business’, preferring to devote most of his attention, as in the previous Parliament, to private bills affecting his locality. Chief among these were land bills. On 13 May Poole opposed a measure to allow Thomas Stolyon to sell lands to pay his debts. Four days later he denounced a similar bill concerning Herbert Pelham*, Ibid. 227. claiming that it ‘was a dangerous precedent for the House to grant this liberty to sell, after a man had settled an estate of his lands to his posterity upon contract of marriage, for great portions [are] given with daughters’. Care needed to be taken that ‘the children sustain no prejudice and that some may be there heard for them’. Ibid. 267, 274. His intervention gained him a place on the committee, which he seems to have chaired as he reported its proceedings three days later. However he was unable to persuade his fellow committee members, who consisted almost entirely of Pelham’s friends and neighbours, that the bill posed a threat to all freeholds. Consequently during the third reading debate on 23 May he denounced the committee, declaring that its 12 members were ‘all Sussex men, but he; and all agreed, but he’. If the bill were to pass, he warned, ‘the right of many shall be taken away without judgment or trial, and that from infants by Act of Parliament’. His lone voice persuaded the Commons, and the bill was rejected upon a division. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 294, 302, 318; S. Lambert, ‘Procedure in House of Commons in Early Stuart Period’, EHR, xcv. 759.

Poole’s objection to the composition of the Pelham land bill committee convinced him that interested parties should not be capable of serving on committee. On 18 May he reiterated the point by moving that officers in the Westminster courts who sat in the Commons should not be permitted to consider the supersedeas bill. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 282, 284. He remained no less convinced that membership of the Commons should be denied to the Scots. During a debate about two naturalization bills on 23 May, Poole contradicted the Speaker’s exhortation to ‘forbear and fall to matters of more importance’, insisting that the question of whether naturalized Scots should be allowed to sit in Parliament and be granted patents of monopolies was ‘a matter of great importance and desired to have it read’. Ibid. 325.

On 20 May Poole confirmed Sir John Savile’s pessimistic observations on the state of the cloth industry in a debate on the Cockayne project, and towards the end of the Parliament, on 3 June, he preferred a bill on behalf of the trade. Ibid. 300, 304, 306, 418; CD 1621, vii. 643; A. Friis, Alderman Cockayne’s Project, 256. It may have been this bill which he tried to bring to the attention of the Commons on 27 May as a measure ‘which he pretended could endure no delay’. At that time, however, the House was preoccupied with accusations of sedition brought by Bishop Neile in the Lords. HMC Portland, ix. 134; Procs. 1614 (Commons), 366. Poole was named to the committee to consider the status of baronets (23 May), a subject which he praised as a ‘matter of honour and reputation’ despite Nicholas Fuller’s demand that it should ‘give place to greater matters’. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 321-2. Poole was among those ordered to attend the king on 29 May. Ibid. 337. He opposed a bill against drunkenness and also a motion to sit on Ascension Day. Ibid. 395, 402, 405. On 3 June he reported a private bill to confirm grants of land in Gloucestershire to Sir John Danvers*. Ibid. 413, 418. He was presumably the ‘Sir Henry Booles’ who on the last day of the Parliament proposed a grant of one subsidy and two fifteenths, ‘in love and hope’. Ibid. 440. Poole acquired an estate at Merton in Oxfordshire upon his second marriage, and also purchased the manor of Oaksey, which he had previously held on a long lease from the duchy of Lancaster, for £1,050 in the summer of 1614. C66/2018/12; DL41/187; VCH Wilts, xiv. 180. In 1616 he was among the Wiltshire magistrates ordered to inquire into the state of the county’s cloth industry. APC, 1616-17, pp. 21-22. He seems to have opposed the attempt of Bishop Robert Abbot to transfer the midsummer quarter sessions from Devizes to Warminster, which caused another bout of factional strife among the local gentry. Wall, ‘Faction’, 128.

At the general election of 1620 Poole stood for Malmesbury, six miles from Kemble. He was by this time one of the most experienced and diligent Members in the Commons, with a reputation as an amusing speaker; indeed, the diarist John Smith* of Nibley referred to him as ‘our merry’ Poole, though very little trace of his humour has actually survived in the records. CD 1621, v. 364, 367. Poole resented the loss of parliamentary time over disputed elections, and on 8 Feb. 1621 proposed an electoral reform bill. CJ, i. 512b, 513b, CD 1621, ii. 35 n. 11, 36 n. 13, 42; v. 443; R. Zaller, Parl. of 1621, p. 39. This was ‘allowed a good motion’ by the House, and referred to the committee for privileges, to which Poole was added. CJ, i. 513b. On 10 Mar. he was one of the resulting sub-committee appointed to draft a bill concerning fair elections. Ibid. 548a. Later that month, when the Yorkshire election controversy was debated, Poole excused the errors of the constables on the grounds that they were ‘poor, and under the command of j.p.s, and ignorant’ (23 March). CD 1621, v. 65 n. 5, CJ, i. 571a. Four days later he drew the Commons attention to the election for Hindon in Wiltshire, where there had been a double return. CJ, i. 576a, CD 1621, ii. 270 n. 6; iii. 5 n. 12; v. 324, 333.

To a greater extent than in any of his previous parliaments, Poole arrived in Westminster with a legislative agenda to pursue. At the first opportunity, on 6 Feb., he preferred two bills, the first to suppress ‘relators, informers, and promoters’, whom he compared to one of the ten plagues of Egypt, and the other ‘against levying fines in other men’s names’. CD 1621, ii. 28 n. 4. The latter was committed on 10 Mar., and eventually reported by Poole on 30 Apr., when it met with further objections from Heneage Finch, and had to be recommitted. Ibid. iv. 278; v. 355; vi. 112; Kyle, 209. Sir Edward Coke considered the informers bill to be ‘excellent, yet defective’, and offered so many amendments that a committee was set up to frame an alternative. CJ, i. 514a, CD 1621, ii. 43 n. 24. When the subject was debated again on 21 Feb., Poole enlarged on the causes of the bill. Informers, he claimed, undermined the powers of magistrates, whereas if cases ‘were tried in the country, it would be remedied. But their trials here at Westminster is the cause of this vexation’. CD 1621, vi. 257. He reported the bill on 7 Mar., and took the chair in grand committee to consider further amendments, reporting back again on 13 March. CD 1621, ii. 173 n. 2, 210; v. 279 n. 7; CJ, i. 542b; Nicholas, Procs. 1621, i. 131. When it was eventually passed, the bill encountered opposition in the Upper House. A conference was suggested by the Lords on 19 Apr., whereupon Poole replied that he desired Coke and Thomas Crewe*, two of the Commons’ greatest legal authorities, to attend. CJ, i. 582a; CD 1621, iii. 20 n. 11.

As in 1614, Poole moved on 21 Feb. that ‘men from King’s Bench and Chancery’ should not be appointed to consider a bill to restrict the power of the Westminster courts to override local courts by writs of supersedeas and certiorari. He took the chair, and when the bill was sent up to the Lords on 5 Mar., called for it to be specially recommended ‘because threatened to be opposed’. CD 1621, ii. 126, 164 n. 10; iv. 103 n. 2; vi. 4; CJ, i. 538a. He was later assigned to help manage a conference, at which the Lords’ amendments were accepted (19 April). CJ, i. 582b. On 3 May he approved a ‘timely’ bill against unjust fees in the courts, and recommended that it should extend to the spiritual courts. Ibid. 605b-606a; CD 1621, iii. 149; v. 137; vi. 130. Poole again steered the forcible entries bill, which he had fostered in 1607, 1610 and 1614, through the committee stage, and when he reported it on 18 May he reminded the House that it had passed in the previous Parliament. CD 1621, iii. 291; ii. 382; v. 173, 381; CJ, i. 523a, 625a. The same day he also spoke in support of a bill for ‘pleading the general issue’ in cases of concealed Crown lands, perhaps reflecting his own experience with the manor of Poole, and called for further legal provisions to be inserted: ‘the king’s counsel [should be required] to express the cause of demurrer, whereas [when] they enter a moratur the subject is much tortured with it’. CD 1621, iii. 284; v. 172; CJ, i. 624a. On 29 May he called for the repeal of the ancient statute against retainers in livery, ‘which lies heavy upon the gentry ... for they may be informed against that was made in former times for to avoid rebellion, [but] now it is a peaceable time’. CD 1621, ii. 403; iv. 388; iii. 340.

As a veteran of the Addled Parliament, Poole contributed to the free speech debate of 12 Feb., declaring ‘nothing so dear to the subject as liberty, no liberty so good as that in Parliament, none in Parliament greater than freedom of speech’, and recommending a petition to the king in writing ‘that the subjects’ claim may remain to posterity’; he was then named to the committee appointed to resolve the matter. CJ, i. 517b, 518a; CD 1621; ii. 58; v. 449. On 15 Feb. he warned, during the debate on supply, that ‘though we are all ready to give, yet let us consider the state of the country. That which yielded £100 yearly is come to £60. Therefore let us not make too bold with our countrymen’s purses till we bring them some good news’. CD 1621, ii. 91, n. 27, n. 29. In the ensuing discussion about how best to tackle England’s deepening economic recession, Poole resorted to two popular perceptions of the causes of the scarcity of coin. On 26 Feb. he alleged that much English money was ‘carried into Scotland and thence into other countries’, while the next day he blamed impositions upon cloth. Nicholas, i. 98; CJ, i. 528a; CD 1621, ii. 140; v. 516-17, 525; vi. 11, 17, 299 n. 41; Friis, 382.

Poole brought the plight of England’s clothiers once again to the Commons’ attention on 5 March. He complained particularly of the sale of wool overseas, but argued against the proposal that clothiers should have the ‘sole emption’ of wool, since ‘it is confessed by both the stapler and clothier, that ’tis better there should be freedom of trade than restraint’. The failure of the Cockayne project, combined with the outbreak of war in Europe, had thrown the cloth trade into its worst recession in recent memory. Especially worrying was the recent collapse of markets for English cloth on the continent. In Poland, for example, Poole reported, ‘the states (being met in Parl[iament] as we are) have made a law that no English cloth (of the best) shall be sold for above £15 and worse kind for £11’. Poole therefore supported a compromise, that ‘the clothier should have pre-emption, for he that buys to convert deserves to have precedence before him that buys to sell again’. CD 1621, v. 26. Nothing further was heard of the matter until Poole brought in a ‘public bill’ for cloth and wool on 1 May; however, it was given a frosty reception by the master of the Wards, Sir Lionel Cranfield*, the former main opponent of the Cockayne project, who retorted ‘there are 75 laws for clothing; let us make one good law out of all of them’. Ibid. iii. 119. At the second reading debate four days later, Poole pleaded that ‘this bill [was] made at the clothiers suit and at their request’, though he admitted that it was too lengthy, ‘which may be helped at the committee’. CJ, i. 609a; CD 1621, vi. 139 n. 9. One clause, to open up the cloth trade to the merchants of the staple, encountered particularly stiff resistance from the Merchant Adventurers, the main exporters of cloth, but Poole argued (7 May) that ‘the more buyers’ there were ‘the better for the commonwealth’. CJ, i. 612a; CD 1621, ii. 351, iii. 189 n. 35. He subsequently chaired a committee at which both sides gave evidence (17 May), but nothing further was heard of the matter. CD 1621, v. 379-80; Friis, 395-410. The following day Poole lent his support to a bill concerning fuller’s earth, which was also of interest to the clothing industry. CD 1621, iii. 289.

Poole favoured free trade, not just in relation to cloth but in general, and consequently he opposed a bill to prohibit imports of corn on 8 March. This measure, intended to protect farmers’ profits, would create an unnatural dearth despite two years of good harvests, and by keeping up prices at home would seriously harm other areas of trade. Ibid. ii. 178 n. 4. As an alternative he called for the repeal of older legislation which had prevented the conversion of arable into pasture, so that farmers would be permitted to diversify into more profitable areas of husbandry. CJ, i. 544b. One new commodity he did not support, however, was tobacco. On 18 Apr. he supported Cranfield and called for the tobacco trade to be pulled up ‘by the roots’, and for some other means to be found to help Virginia. CJ, i. 581b; CD 1621, iii. 11. When it was proposed on 28 Apr. that MPs who were members of trading companies ought not to speak on the free trade bill, Poole made an exception for those that served for towns and outports, ‘who ought to have voices’. Nicholas, i. 346; CD 1621, v. 110, iv. 272; iii. 106 n. 9. On 5 May, in response to a bill to give Colchester the power to raise money for paving its streets, Poole again warned of the dangers of ‘great impositions on merchandizes’, which ‘hindereth free trade’; he again denounced impositions as a cause of economic decay ‘which we have denied to be good, though they have been laid by the king’. CJ, i. 609b; CD 1621, iii. 171; Nicholas, ii. 25. He was a conspicuous supporter of reducing the rate of interest to eight per cent, which some believed would be a further stimulus to England’s ailing economy, and with Sir George More was the first named to the committee appointed to consider the usury bill (7 May). CD 1621, iii. 184, ii. 350; CJ, i. 611a; C. Russell, PEP, 98. He argued on 24 May that foreigners should be allowed to prosecute bankrupts under the provisions of a new bankruptcy bill ‘for otherwise it will discourage strangers to trade with us’. Nicholas, ii. 95-6.

The main grievance of the session was monopolies, and on 2 Mar. Poole produced examples of complaints against a patent for tithes in both Wiltshire and Oxfordshire. CD 1621, vi. 278. Four days later he and Sir George More acted as tellers against a motion to provide for ‘aggravation, amplification or recollection’ of the charges against the inns and alehouses patentee (Sir) Giles Mompesson*, but the yeas won and a conference with the Lords was arranged. CJ, i. 541a. Having led the Armourers’ Company’s campaign against one patentee in 1607, Poole spoke to a bill ‘for making [the] arms of the kingdom more serviceable’ at its second reading on 7 Mar., insisting that care be taken that ‘it may make no monopoly’. Ibid. 543a; CD 1621, ii. 174 n. 3. He was appointed to attend a general conference with the Lords on monopolies on 13 March. CJ, i. 551a. In the ongoing proceedings against Mompesson on 16 Mar., Poole denied that privilege should prevent MPs from voluntarily giving evidence under oath, and ten days later was among those who demanded judgment in the case. On the following day (27 Mar.) he called for the ‘licensed inns’ to be suppressed by Proclamation. Ibid. 558a, 576a, b; CD 1621, ii. 235 n. 12, 268 n. 41, 271. He was subsequently named to help draft a bill for the regulation of inns and markets (24 April). CJ, i. 590a. On 25 Apr., perhaps fearing that the zeal against monopolists would undermine the validity of other royal grants, he delivered a bill ‘for confirmation of grants made to the king and of letters patent made by the king to others’, which was described by Sir Dudley Digges as ‘the most dangerous bill that ever came into the House’. Sir Jerome Horsey agreed, suggesting that it was a shield to patentees, many of whom would be willing to pay ‘£1,000 a man to have this bill pass’; to which Poole, disclaiming any private interest, vainly pointed out that it followed the precedent of an Act of 1601. The measure was consequently thrown out after only one reading. CJ, i. 590a; CD 1621, iii. 78, v. 348.

In the general witch hunt against corrupt officials that followed the allegation that the lord chancellor (Sir Francis Bacon*) had taken bribes, Poole argued on 20 Apr. that Sir John Bennet*, who had been accused of accepting gratuities in his role as a judge in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, should be heard before the House decided how to proceed against him, and was named to a committee for this purpose. CD 1621, iii. 29; v. 340; CJ, i. 586a. Poole supported calls for one Churchill, a registrar in Chancery, to be stripped of office on 25 Apr., CD 1621, iii. 80 n. 21; CJ, i. 591a, 594b. but was more cautious when it came to punishing the masters in Chancery, who had also demanded excessive fees. He warned the House on 27 Apr. to ‘deal charily in that’, and at the committee for grievances pointed out that allegations of a knighthood of the Bath having been ‘bought’ were ‘not fit’ for parliamentary discussion, since the case of the baronets had been held unfit in 1614. CD 1621, ii. 330. He was nevertheless included on the committee to examine the masters in Chancery. CD 1621, iii. 99; CJ, i. 594b.

When rumours that the Commons were once more discussing baronets reached James, further discussion of the subject was prohibited. The king also forbade discussion of other sensitive issues, such as whether clergymen should be excluded from commissions of the peace. The House was outraged, and on 1 May Poole moved to petition James to censure those who had misinformed him. He added that while the king was certainly the fountain of honour, he should be told how the baronets, often ‘unworth[y] men, ... desire to rise to that height as to precede the grandchildren of earls’. CD 1621, iii. 113; iv. 283, v. 124-5; CJ, i. 599a; Nicholas, i. 365; Zaller, 101. Poole argued that Sir George Marshall*, who had apparently arranged for his brother-in-law Sir William Pope to be knighted in return for 1,000 marks, should be brought before the House. CD 1621, iii. 115, CJ, i. 599b. The following day, amid calls for Sir Edward Villiers* to be expelled and punished for his involvement in the gold and silver thread monopoly, Poole encouraged the Commons to put Villiers on trial themselves, on the grounds that the Lower House had just as much right to judicature as the Lords, as ‘the Lords and we were once one House’. Indeed, he called for a committee ‘to consider of the power and privilege of the house for judicature’. CD 1621, iii. 131, 137; v. 363; vi. 125, 127; CJ, i. 603a, Nicholas, ii. 6. Though undoubtedly popular, and very widely reported, this speech was little more than rhetoric and bluster, and Villiers, with the protection of his half-brother the marquess of Buckingham’s allies in the Lords, was in due course acquitted.

On the punishment of the Catholic lawyer Edward Floyd for his indecent exultation over the misfortunes of the king’s daughter Elizabeth of Bohemia, Poole spoke several times and was appointed to three committees to consider the case; but he was not among those who competed to suggest ever more bloodthirsty revenge. CD 1621, iii. 125, 166, 191, 238, 275 n. 37; ii. 361-2, v. 361; vi. 122; CJ, i. 608a, 604b, 614b; Nicholas, ii. 21. He showed no inclination towards hysteria himself, but resented both the waste of the House’s time and its distraction from what he regarded as the real issue, the offences of the warden of the Fleet, which he had been labouring to redress since the opening of the session. CD 1621, ii. 81 n. 29, 157 n. 5, 263 n. 8, v. 511; CJ, i. 521a, b, 526a, b, 536a, 573a. In fact he went so far, on 16 May, as to declare the warden to be ‘a witch, that diverted his own questioning last time, by Floyd, and now would do it again’. CJ, i. 623a.

Private measures continued to occupy much of Poole’s time, just as they had done in the previous parliaments in which he had sat. He continued strenuously to defend inheritance rights in private legislation. In response to Sir Warwick Hele’s bill on 10 Mar. he argued ‘against all bills of this nature, where the inheritance [is] taken away from an infant’; though he approved the bill’s provision ‘to make leases, as tenant in tail’. Ibid. 548a; CD 1621, ii. 203 n. 5; iv. 141 n. 1. One week later, after the second reading of a measure to allow Martin Calthorp to sell land, he warned the bill committee to ‘be careful of this business’. CJ, i. 559b, CD 1621 v. 305. On 20 Apr. he complained of ‘the miscarriage of the Chancery, in meddling with inheritances’ at the second reading of a bill for the tenants of Oldbury manor in Gloucestershire, while on 1 May he objected to a measure designed to convey lands from Edmund Clough to the earl of March on the grounds that it was ‘dangerous to suffer tenants for life to pass away the inheritance of lands’. CJ, i. 583b, 598b; CD 1621, iii. 110. Finally, on 17 May he opposed Reginald Mohun’s bill on the grounds that ‘this gentleman settled land upon his son and his lady and the issues of their body, and that the Parliament should alter this [is] unreasonable’. CJ, i. 623b; CD 1621, iii. 278. In view of his hostility to private lands bills in general, Poole’s decision to support the bill to allow Francis Redferne to sell estates in Wiltshire on the grounds that it was ‘done by consent of all parties’ was thus surprising (16 March). CJ, i. 556a; CD 1621, v. 302 n. 3. It was not only private land bills that Poole regarded as a threat, however, for he viewed a measure to place a time limit on legal actions in the equity courts as equally undesirable. On 25 May he condemned it as ‘fruitless and idle, unjust and injurious’, and illustrated the need to retain the writ of formedon by citing the example of the Nevilles with their ‘£20,000 per annum tied by entail’. However, the bill, which was commended by Coke, passed after a minor emendation at the table. CD 1621, iii. 303; iv. 370; v. 50; CJ, i. 626b; Nicholas, ii. 100-1.

On 21 Apr. Poole advised the House to concentrate on public bills because ‘the time of this session is likely not to be long’. CD 1621, iii. 35. Five days later he moved for a sub-committee, to which he was named, to ‘digest the bills and grievances most necessary to be proceeded in, and for trade’. Ibid. iii. 88; ii. 323; v. 350; CJ, i. 592b. When he reported this the following week he complained that the committee had been poorly attended, and called for new Members to be added. CD 1621, vi. 123; iii. 128 n. 4; CJ, i. 602b. Despite his hostility to private land bills, Poole was not, of course, averse to all private legislation. On the contrary he was keen that the Commons should focus on commonwealth bills, and criticized the Speaker’s preference for bills for which he was to receive fees from the promoters: ‘we take pains of unusual extent’, Poole observed on 17 May: ‘come at seven, sit till one, come at two, sit till seven’. CD 1621, iii. 279.

Poole remained at Westminster until the end of the sitting, and indeed was one of the Members appointed to prepare the adjournment conference of 29 May. CJ, i. 630a; CD 1621, iii. 367; v. 188; CJ, i. 633a. After the long recess he successfully moved on 24 Nov. 1621 that the bill to naturalize the daughters of Sir Horace Vere should be read twice on the same day ‘because it concerneth the children of a gentleman that hath deserved so well of this kingdom’. Nicholas, ii. 202; CD 1621, iii. 441. Although he had served on the committee to draft the electoral reform bill, he was not satisfied with the outcome. In the second reading debate of 28 Nov. he demanded that ‘some provision’ be made ‘against letters, solicitations, etc. for choosing knights’, and complained of ‘blanks by some boroughs, to put in what burgess they will, to whom they delivered it’. In county elections, he argued idealistically, ‘men should not stand to be knights’. Instead, the choice of Members should be made by the county itself rather than by those ‘that desire it’. In this way contests, and the expenses of canvassing, could be avoided. CJ, i. 649b, CD 1621, ii. 460; v. 221, vi. 205. When it came to debating the war and supply, on 27 Nov. Poole called for a grand committee to sit from 9am to 4pm, but indicated his own lack of enthusiasm for war by urging the committee to concentrate on domestic needs and ‘to consider as well of the religion at home for our safety, as of the Palatinate abroad’. CJ, i. 649b, CD 1621, iii. 473; v. 408; vi. 204, 326. The following day he supported the imposition of double taxation on recusants, but was in favour of granting only one subsidy, to be collected in February, in the hope that this would ensure another session. Nicholas, ii. 243, CD 1621, ii. 466; vi. 209 n. 13, 329. On 29 Nov. he was appointed to take charge of the intestacy bill, and the following day he opposed a proviso exempting Berwick from the fullers’ earth bill, which he said would be ‘a back-door’. CJ, i. 650b, 653a, CD 1621, ii. 470; v. 409; vi. 206. His main pre-occupation was with the informers bill, which the Lords had heavily amended. He took the chair for the examination of these changes, and was sent to the Lords on 1 Dec. to desire a joint committee to compare the text with the original bill, on which he served. CD 1621, ii. 482-3; v. 410; vi. 217; CJ, i. 654a; LJ, iii. 177b. When the king took offence over the debate on Prince Charles’s marriage, Poole appealed to the Commons on 14 Dec. not to ‘dwell on the rocks of preserving our privilege’, but to proceed with the ‘needfullest matters’ of business, ‘that we may not go now home again with empty hands’. Nicholas, ii. 328; CJ, i. 663b; CD 1621, ii. 520; vi. 237. His final contribution before the abrupt termination of the session was to second Sir George More’s suggestion that Members arriving after prayers should be fined, and ‘half the mulct to go to the poor’. CJ, i. 668a.

After his second marriage, Poole divided his time between his Wiltshire estates and Merton, his wife’s seat in Oxfordshire, and in due course he was added to the Oxfordshire commission of the peace. VCH Oxon. v. 224, 233. In 1624 Poole was returned for Oxfordshire to the fourth Jacobean Parliament after a contest with Sir William Pope*. Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 543. On the opening day of business (23 Feb.) he moved for a survey to be made of the bills which had passed both Houses in the previous Parliament, recommending that the Commons should proceed with ‘the best and most necessary’ of them. Rich 1624, p. 3, ‘Hawarde 1624’, p. 147; CJ, i. 716a. Naturally several of these were bills to which he had devoted a great deal of energy three years earlier. For this reason he urged on 25 Feb. that time should not be wasted on election disputes, and argued that it would not prejudice the Chippenham election case to admit Sir Francis Popham* to the House while the validity of his return was examined. Electoral reform again featured on Poole’s agenda, as he immediately tendered a new bill and was later appointed to a committee to combine this measure with the revived 1621 bill (15 March). CJ, i. 673b, 686a; Rich 1624, p. 11; D. Hirst, Representative of the People?, 230. He intervened in debates concerning the Cambridgeshire election on 16 Mar., ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 83v. and on 24 Mar. acted as a teller in favour of Sir Thomas Holland* when the validity of the Norfolk election was put to the question. CJ, i. 749b.

On 9 Mar. Poole, as a teller, supported a motion to engross the supersedeas bill immediately following its second reading as the measure was one of those which had been revived from 1621. However, the suggestion was defeated and the bill was placed in committee, to which Poole was then appointed. Poole again moved to engross the bill at the report stage, on 23 Mar., but this time his motion met with objections from clerk of the Crown, Thomas Fanshawe I*. CJ, i. 680b; ‘Spring 1624’, p. 155. Poole promoted the revival of several further measures, among them the bill concerning fines levied in other men’s names, which he reported on 6 April. CJ, i. 755b; ‘Spring 1624’, p. 176; ‘Holland 1624’, i. f. 82v. On 17 Apr. he tendered a petition from the prisoners in the Fleet and was the first named to the committee appointed to examine conditions in the prison. CJ, i. 769b. With Coke, William Noye and (Sir) Walter Pye I he was ordered on 23 Apr. to review the Lords’ amendments to the bill for ‘pleading the general issue’, which sought to enable defendants in cases of alleged intrusion on Crown lands to place the burden of proof on the Crown. Ibid. 689a. He moved to repeal the statute prohibiting liveried retainers on 27 Apr. Pym 1624’, iii. f. 20v. and was named to committees for bills concerning wool exports (6 Mar.), clothiers (8 Mar.), usury (8 Mar.), bankrupts (22 Mar.), Redferne’s lands (17 Mar.), Jermy’s decree (7 Apr.), and Calthorpe’s jointure (14 Apr.), as well as to conferences on monopolies (8 Apr.) and the legal limitations bill (30 Apr.), in all of which matters he had previously been involved. CJ, i. 678b, 679b, 688a, 695a, 744b, 757a, 757b, 766a, 773a. On the subject of the bankrupts bill, he argued on 29 Apr., much as he had in 1621, that the measure should apply to strangers and aliens, but added that it would be hard to make it a felony if the parties were ‘beyond the seas’. Ibid. 694a.

Among the new bills of the Parliament, Poole was again mainly occupied by private legislation. On 10 Mar. in a debate on Sir Edward Herne’s land sale bill, he resorted to his characteristic plea that ‘care may be had of this and the like bills that when men have made estates of lands entail upon consideration of marriage and the like, that afterward the party may not have power to defeat his heir of that estate provided upon good and just considerations of marriage’. ‘Spring 1624’, p. 97. On 2 Apr. he asked for a copy of a bill concerning his friend Lord Danvers and that the committee considering it should either be enlarged or made open; in this he may have reflected the bitter experience of 1614 and 1621, since he implored the committee not to ‘sit upon it, till a day or two within the term’. CJ, i. 752a. He was named to the committee for a Thames navigation bill that had been promoted by the Members for Oxford city and university in previous parliaments, but at the report stage on 22 Apr. he brought forward objections in the form of a petition from ‘divers inhabitants’ and secured its recommittal. Ibid. 772b. He joined in complaints about the exactions of heralds on 28 Apr., providing examples of their excessive fees for funerals. ‘Pym 1624’, i. f. 81v. On 30 Apr. he reported a jointure bill for the widow of Sir James Scudamore* as fit to ‘sleep’. ‘Hawarde 1624’, p. 277. He attended both committee meetings of a bill concerning the advowson of Sutton church, on 8 and 11 May. Kyle, 212.

Unlike many of his fellow Members, Poole was unenthusiastic about the prospect of a war against Spain following the breakdown of negotiations for Prince Charles’s marriage to the Infanta, and several times he attempted to divert the Commons from this subject. On 27 Feb., following the report of an initial conference with the Lords on both the prince’s experiences in Spain, and the situation in the Palatinate, he moved to defer the discussion till a later date. CJ, i. 721b. He was among those appointed to attend a further conference on 11 Mar. on the country’s readiness for war. Ibid. 683a. Speaking against a bill to naturalize the children of English soldiers serving in the Netherlands, rejected on its first reading on 12 Mar., he pointed out that it was ‘not the order of this House to naturalize such as we know not how they stand affected’. ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 73v; ‘Spring 1624’, p. 111. On the question of supply he proposed on 19 Mar. ‘to put it off ... [and] to consider to have aid from the papists, and from Scotland’. Holles 1624, p. 46, ‘Lowther 1624’, f. 38v. He was cut off during further discussion of the same subject the following day. ‘Lowther 1624’, f. 42.

When lord treasurer Middlesex (Sir Lionel Cranfield*) came under fire, Poole called for his secretary to be interrogated (5 Apr.), claiming that it was ‘the ancient liberties of the House to examine the greatest offender’. ‘Spring 1624’, p. 174; ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 112. Five days later, at the committee for drafting charges, to which he had been appointed, Poole argued that the treasurer’s hearing should be held in the afternoon, as Cranfield had requested. ‘Holland 1624’, ii. f. 5. His support for the beleaguered minister, which perhaps dated back to their mutual opposition to the Cockayne project ten years earlier, was twice more demonstrated, on 15 Apr. and again on 1 May, when he opposed Sir Thomas Wentworth and Sir Edwin Sandys, both of whom wanted to lay additional charges against Middlesex, such as the laying of impositions upon hops. Holles 1624, p. 83, CJ, i. 696a; C.C.G. Tite, Impeachment and Parl. Judicature, 151, 161; M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 482n. Poole clashed with Sandys again over whether the case of Dr. Anyan, the master of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, should be referred to the Lords, on 20 May. Having previously urged that Anyan be given a chance to defend himself, Poole ‘moved that consideration might be had lest we wronged this House by leaving judicature wholly to the Lords’, as had happened in the cases of both the lord chancellor (Sir Francis Bacon*), and Middlesex. He argued, on the same grounds that he had offered for the punishment of Sir Edward Villiers in 1621, that this was ‘contrary to the practice of 200 years’. Though silenced by Sandys’s objection that it was ‘not reasonable now in the end of the Parliament to stir this question’, Poole was nevertheless added to the committee to search for precedents concerning impeachments. CJ, i. 692a, 707b; ‘Earle 1624’, f. 186v; ‘Lowther 1624’, f. 70; Tite, 175.

Neither Poole nor his son sat in the 1625 Parliament. The reason is not known, but they may have been prevented from standing by disturbances in Wiltshire concerning the levy for forces to be sent under Count Mansfeld to recapture the Palatinate, in which one of Poole’s servants was arrested and hauled before the Privy Council. APC, 1625-6, pp. 54, 111. In 1626, however, Poole was again returned for Wiltshire, while his son sat for Cirencester. In contrast to his performance in previous parliaments, Poole made only a few speeches. Moreover, he avoided becoming involved in the session’s most contentious debates, which concerned the duke of Buckingham and foreign policy. At the opening of the session he acted as a teller in favour of inviting the dean of Canterbury to preach at the Members’ communion (9 February 1626). Procs. 1626, ii. 8. The following day he was granted privilege to stay a suit brought against him by the diplomat Sir Stephen Lesieur. Ibid. ii. 12. As a member of the committee for privileges, on 16 Feb. he urged the House to order the release of Emmanuel Giffard*, who had been arrested shortly after being elected for Bury St. Edmunds. Ibid. ii. 54, 56. Poole was the first Member named to consider the revived elections bill on 2 March. Ibid. ii. 177. He took the chair for a bill to prevent clerics below the rank of bishop serving on the commission of the peace, which he reported on 14 Mar., and again on 21 Mar. when it was engrossed. Ibid. ii. 279, 327. His committee appointments, which numbered over 90, included a bill for the jointure of the wife of his kinsman by marriage, Sir Thomas Neville (17 March). Ibid. ii. 305. During debate on the first Remonstrance justifying the House’s proceedings against Buckingham, on Friday 1 Apr., Poole vainly complained that since Tuesday they had been prohibited from proceeding with bills or anything else, and moved to get back to real business as soon as possible; he was nevertheless among the 30 Members chosen to carry the Remonstrance to the king on 5 April. Ibid. ii. 420, 430. This may have been an unwelcome duty, since he consistently opposed the duke’s impeachment, which he feared was a waste of time and would put the session at risk of an abrupt termination. He was appointed to a committee to inquire into the detention of the St. Peter, a French ship detained by Buckingham as lord admiral, and acted as teller against counting this as a grievance on 1 May. Ibid. iii. 108.

Poole’s long parliamentary experience is reflected in his comment on 4 May that the question of raising revenue through the resumption of Crown lands was not suitable for referral to a committee. Instead, ‘a business of this moment’ should be ‘argued in the House’. Ibid. iii. 159. When a bill to confirm a salt patent held by John More* was introduced the following day Poole, as a veteran of the monopolies debates of 1621 and 1624, deplored ‘the abuse to the House of bringing in a public bill hither to justify his patent’, whereupon the Commons condemned the patent as a grievance. Ibid. iii. 175. As the attack upon Buckingham gained momentum and threatened to exclude all other parliamentary business, Poole vainly moved on 22 May to go on with legislation. Ibid. iii. 306. He tendered a bill concerning the cloth trade on 1 June, and four days later defended it against objections raised by the London merchant (Sir) Maurice Abbot*: ‘if cloth at Leadenhall be not bought by the Londoners, but lies upon the hand of the clothiers ... then any stranger not a freeman of London may buy those cloths which the Londoners do not, paying those customs and duties that belong to the City’. Ibid. iii. 339, 341, 369, 372. He reported the bill on 10 June, and after further amendment and the addition of a proviso for the Cinque Ports, it was ordered to be engrossed two days later. Ibid. iii. 415, 417, 423.

Debating a further Remonstrance aimed at Buckingham in a committee of the whole House on 6 June, Poole expressed reservations about the use of sub-committees: ‘I have observed that nothing has been committed but first it has received a debate and consideration in the House or grand committee’. Ibid. iii. 379. He called on 7 June for the financier Burlamachi’s loan of £4,700, which had been spent on soldiers in the Low Countries, to be repaid, a point that highlighted the necessity of raising parliamentary taxation. Ibid. iii. 387. In response to the king’s letter urging supply on 12 June, Poole joined Sir Richard Weston in calling for the subsidy bill to be read: ‘that is to be done which concerns the honour of this House and the satisfaction of the king. Let us consider our engagements upon the dissolution of the treaties with Spain [in 1624] and our engagements this Parliament’. Ibid. iii. 424; Russell, 308, 434. He is not known to have spoken in the debate which followed after the House had resolved itself into grand committee. On 14 June Poole was named to his last committees, to consider a bill ‘for the better continuance of peace and unity in the Church and Commonwealth’ and a private bill concerning the bankruptcy of Richard Pigott. Procs. 1626, iii. 444. Parliament was dissolved the next day.

Poole served as a commissioner for the Forced Loan in both Wiltshire and Oxfordshire. He was not re-elected in 1628. Following the death of his wife in 1629 he commenced Chancery proceedings against her children from a previous marriage over tithes and rents from Merton. VCH Oxon. v. 223; C78/1920/11. In his will, dated 17 Mar. 1631, Poole charged his son Sir Neville ‘not to be carried away with idle sports and vain delights of the world, but chiefly to apply himself to the service of God, and next to the good of his country, and to preserve that poor estate which I by the providence of God shall leave for him’. PROB 11/162, f. 351. He died on 3 Oct. 1632. C142/489/144.