Hugh Pollard (sheriff)

[3] He was the eldest son and heir of Sir Lewis Pollard (c.1465–1526) of King's Nympton, a Justice of the Common Pleas from 1514 to 1526[4] and Member of Parliament for Totnes in 1491.

[6] The Pollard family were first established in Devon before the 13th century at the manor of Way in the parish of St Giles in the Wood, near Great Torrington.

Hugh's younger brother was the more prominent Sir Richard Pollard (1505–1542), MP for Taunton (1536) and for Devon (1539, 1542), of Putney, Surrey, King's Remembrancer of the Exchequer and a law reporter,[7] who was an assistant of Thomas Cromwell in administering the surrender of religious houses following the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

[8] In 1537 Thomas was granted by King Henry VIII the manor of Combe Martin in Devon[9] and in 1540 Forde Abbey.

It was in the small Devonshire parish of St Giles in the Wood, the ancestral home of the Pollards, where Rolle purchased his seat of Stevenstone, which eventually at the start of the 20th century became the caput of "the largest estate Devon had ever seen",[11] today managed by the Clinton Devon Estates company.