to Bios PageSir John WALLOP, Knight
Born: ABT 1490, South Ockendon, Sussex, England
Died: 11 Jul 1551, Guisnes, Essex, England
Notes: Knight of the Garter.
Father: Stephen WALLOP
Mother: Dau. ASHLEY
¿Married 1: Elizabeth St. JOHN (C. Kildare)?
Married 2: Elizabeth HARLESTON (d. 1552) (dau. of Clement Harleston and Margaret Teye) 8 Jun 1529
English soldier and diplomatist, belonged to an old Hampshire family. Adopting the profession of arms, he commanded ships which took part in the war between England and France in 1513 and 1514.
After the French fleet had raised and burnt Brighton on the Sussex coast in 1513 in the reign of Henry VIII, Sir John Wallop was ordered by the King to carry out a reprisal raid. Sir John sailed with his fleet to Normandy with 800 men only, where he is reported to have burnt twenty-one towns and villages, and to have demolished several harbours, and all the French Ships in the Ports of Staples, Fraport. Ever since, the name Wallop has been synonymous with a beating or good hiding.
Later he served the King of Portugal against the Moors, and then he fought for his own sovereign in Ireland and in France.
In 1526 Wallop began his diplomatic career, being sent on an errand to Germany by Henry VIII, and from 1532 to 1541 he passed much of his time in Paris and elsewhere in France as the representative of the English king.
He had married his second wife, Elizabeth Harleston, Harleston, or Harlesden, at Windsor, in 1529. She was the daughter of Clement Harlestone of Okinden (b. 1493 - d. 24 Oct 1544), Essex and Margaret Teye. Elizabeth was often with him in France and often traveled back and forth. In 1532, she was one of Anne Boleyn’s attendants when Anne, as Marquess of Pembroke, visited France with King Henry VIII. She was in the funeral process of Queen Jane Seymour in 1537. Her sister, Margaret Harlestone, married Roger Ascham.
The Priory of St Nicholas, Barlynch, was dissolved in Feb 1536, and by Jul 1537, John Berwick, the Prior had been assigned a pension of 20 marks. After the Dissolution the site was granted by the King to Sir John Wallop.
Henry spent the windfall from the sale of monastic lands on an expanded building and decoration programme centred in and around London. The French King's latest building projects, such as the decoration of the chateau of Chambord, were not the model for, but gave added impetus to, the work at Whitehall and the palace of Nonesuch. On occasions, Francois discussed Henry's building ideas with his Ambassador, Sir John Wallop, to whom he also gave a guided tour of his private gallery and baths at Fontainebleau. He offered to send Henry marble and the moulds for busts of several Roman emperors which he was expecting from Italy.
Wallop filled several other public positions, including that of lieutenant of Calais, before Jan 1541, when he was suddenly arrested on a charge of treason; his offence, however, was not serious and in the same year he was made captain of Guines.
His wife Elizabeth wrote on 8 Aug 1538 from Farleigh in Hampshire to Lady Lisle in Calais. She was obviously on intimate terms with the whole family and writes of Lady Lisle’s daughter, Anne Bassett, that “there is no doubt but she shall come to some great marriage”. She also refers to the Countess of Sussex’s recent miscarriage. Anne Bassett was at that time living in the Sussex household. In Mar 1541, when Lady Wallop was at their house in Calais, Sir John Wallop was placed under house arrest in England on vague charges stemming from the seizure of Lord Lisle’s papers in Calais the previous year. He was pardoned and released within a few weeks.
In 1543 he led a small force to help the Emperor Carlos V in his invasion of France, and he remained at his post at Guines until his death there. Sir John had no children by either of his wives.
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