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LYBBE, Richard (by 1479-1527/28), of Tavistock, Devon and Englefield, Berks.
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Family and Education
b. by 1479, 1st s. of Richard Lybbe of Tavistock by Joan. m. 1521 or later, Bridget, da. of William Justice of Reading, Berks., 1s. 2da. suc. fa. July/Dec. 1504.2
Offices Held
Biography
Richard Lybbe was born at Tavistock, where in 1500 he and his father were named feoffees in a conveyance of property, but on entering the service of the Englefield family he migrated to Berkshire and married a daughter of a wealthy Reading merchant. By 1527 he had settled in the village of Englefield, was holding some property at Sulham nearby, and had enlarged his modest inheritance by the purchase of the manor of Hardwick in Oxfordshire which was to become the home of his descendants. He had been returned for Tavistock in 1515 when the King had asked for the election of the previous Members, and thus he had probably sat in the Parliament of 1512 for which the names of the town’s Members are lost. If his links with the Englefields predated 1512, his election in that year could have been favoured by Sir Thomas Englefield, who died before the next Parliament. What else has come to light about Lybbe derives from his will made on 7 Oct. 1527 and proved in the following February by his ‘master’ Thomas Englefield and Walter Barton of Reading. After remembering several churches, including those of his home and birthplace, he provided for his wife, children and brothers, and left money to the servants of Thomas Tropenell of Great Chalfield in Wiltshire and rings to Tropenell’s wife and her sister-in-law Elizabeth Englefield. He also established a perpetual obit for the souls of his family at Tavistock.3