GOLLOP (GALLOP), George (1581-1650), of Bugle Street, Southampton, Hants.

Gollop’s ancestors migrated from the north country to Dorset in 1465, and a pedigree was entered for the senior branch by the heralds at their visitation in 1623. Vis. Dorset (Harl. Soc. xx), 43. His eldest brother married well and became a county magistrate. Gollop himself was apprenticed to a kinsman whose business he inherited in 1605, and became a shipowner and merchant, exporting woollen cloth and importing paper and linen from France and Spain and fish from Newfoundland. PROB 11/106, f. 16; Exams. and Deps. 1627-34 ed. R.C. Anderson (Soton Rec. Soc. xxxi), 73; Exams. and Deps. 1634-9 ed. R.C. Anderson (Soton Rec. Soc. xxxiv), 84. By 1625 he had purchased Stanbridge, near Romsey in Hampshire. After serving Southampton in all the chief municipal offices he was returned for the borough to the first three Caroline Parliaments, but left no mark on the records in 1625 or 1626. When he refused to contribute to the Forced Loan the deputy lieutenants were reluctant to penalize him, but the lord lieutenant (Sir Edward Conway I*), desired to make an example of Gollop, who submitted to avoid a summons from the Privy Council. Add. 12922, f. 88v. In the following year he was granted letters of marque. Exams. and Deps. 1639-44 ed. R.C. Anderson (Soton Rec. Soc. xxxvi), 65. He made an unrecorded intervention in the billeting debate of 8 Apr. 1628, and returned to the subject on 6 June, informing the Commons that Southampton had been swamped with soldiers, many of them Irish, who had recently been moved to the surrounding countryside. CD 1628, iv. 147, 159-60; Procs. 1628, vi. 64. He was among those appointed to examine the Muscovy Company’s patent (17 May), and in the second session he was added to the committee to investigate the case of John Rolle*, who had refused to pay Tunnage and Poundage (3 Feb. 1629). CD 1628, iii. 449; CJ, i. 926a.

In 1636 Gollop was granted Southampton castle, a ruin he had been leasing since 1619. J.S. Davies, Hist. Soton, 83. He does not seem to have stood for the Short Parliament, but was returned again in the autumn of 1640. A parliamentary supporter in the Civil War, he was secluded at Pride’s Purge. M.F. Keeler, Long Parl. 189. He was ill when he drew up his will on 20 Apr. 1650, leaving extensive bequests to local charities. PROB 11/213, f. 18. It was proved on 3 July 1650 by his nephew Roger, the residuary legatee, who represented Southampton in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament.