Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/37

 of Winchester, was considered a possible successor (, Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1617). This was again the case on Bacon's disgrace in 1621 (, Bishop Williams, p. 201).

Hobart protested against the outrageous sentence which Coke proposed to inflict on the Earl of Suffolk in 1619, and carried the majority of the court with him. In November 1619 a petition of the justices of Norfolk against permitting the import of foreign grain until the price of corn, then much depressed by too plentiful harvests, should have risen again, was referred to him and the chief justice of the king's bench, and they advised that the petition should be granted. He was judge of assize in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, and Warwickshire in the spring of 1620, and made inquiries of the various justices about the necessity of providing local magazines for the storage of corn, receiving adverse replies in every case. On 5 June 1624 he was appointed a commissioner to mediate with the creditors of poor prisoners for debt owing less than 200l. in and near London, except those in the King's Bench and Fleet prisons, who had been otherwise provided for. In September of that year he was joined as a law-assessor with the privy council in committee upon the Amboyna business. His patent was renewed on Charles's accession, but he died at his house at Blickling in Norfolk, 26 Dec. 1625. He was a very modest and learned lawyer, and as a judge escaped the charge of subserviency to the crown. He was ‘a great loss to the public weal,’ says Spelman; and Croke (Reports, temp. Car. 28) calls him ‘a most learned, prudent, grave, and religious judge.’ Bacon, however, accuses him of falsely affecting intimacy with great persons (, Life and Letters, Ellis and Spedding, iv. 93).

A volume of Hobart's reports was published in quarto in 1641, and subsequent editions appeared in 1650, 1671, 1678, and 1724.

Hobart married Dorothy, daughter of Sir Robert Bell of Beaupré Hall, Norfolk, lord chief baron under Elizabeth, by whom he had sixteen children, twelve sons and four daughters. From him descended John Hobart, first earl of Buckinghamshire [q. v.]

A portrait of Hobart in his judge's robes, by C. Jansen, is in the possession of Viscount Powerscourt (Cat. Tudor Exhibition, 1890, p. 110). Another, either by Mytens or Van Somer, was presented by Serjeants' Inn in 1877 to the National Portrait Gallery. 

HOBART, JAMES (d. 1507), attorney-general, the youngest son of Thomas Hobart of Leyham in Norfolk, was entered at Lincoln's Inn early in the reign of Edward IV. He is frequently referred to in the Paston letters. John Paston was his intimate friend, and several times consulted him, and he was apparently employed in some legal capacity by John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk (Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, ii. 344, 368, 378, iii. 110, 140, 164, 220, 243, 338). In 1479 he was elected Lent reader at his inn. Probably he is the James Hoberd who represented Ipswich in parliament in 1467 and 1478. On 1 Nov. 1486 he was appointed attorney-general by Henry VII, and afterwards sworn of the privy council. In the same year he was appointed one of the commissioners to take Calais into the hands of the king, and inquire into the possessions of the crown there (Mat. Hist. Henry VII, i. 356). In April 1487 he was a commissioner of array for Norfolk, and in September was appointed with others to superintend the east coast fisheries (ib. ii. 135, 193). In this year there was also a grant made for the repair of Yarmouth harbour under his supervision (ib. ii. 218). In 1489 he was on the commission of peace and oyer and terminer for Suffolk, and the commission of gaol-delivery for Ipswich and Norwich (ib. ii. 479, 482). In August 1501 he was appointed to try a suit at York, when he is styled serjeant (Plumpton Correspondence, p. 161, Camden Soc.) He was knighted at the creation of Henry, prince of Wales, on 18 Feb. 1502–3. He continued in his office until his death in 1507. According to some authorities he was buried in Norwich Cathedral. His first wife was a sister of John Lyhert; his third, Margaret, daughter of Peter Naunton of Letheringham, Suffolk, who predeceased him in 1494. He bought and resided at Hales Hall in Norfolk. Sir Henry Hobart [q. v.], the chief justice, was his great-grandson. The name is also spelt Hoberd and Hubbard. 

HOBART, JOHN, first (1694?–1756), son of Sir Henry Hobart, fourth baronet, who was killed in a duel early in 1699, was in his fifth year at the time of his father's death. He was educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and was M.P. for St. Ives, Cornwall, in 1715 and from 1722 to 1727, and for Norfolk from 1727 to 1728. In 1721 he was a commissioner for