EURE, William (1579-1646), of Ingleby and Malton, Yorks.

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Family and Education

b. 1579, o.s. of Ralph Eure, 3rd Lord Eure, by his 1st w. educ. Queen’s, Oxf. 1593; G. Inn 1595. m. 15 Sept. 1601, Lucy, da. of Sir Andrew Noel of Dalby, Leics., 2s. 7da. KB 1603; suc. fa. as 4th Lord Eure 1 Apr. 1617.

Offices Held

Member, council in the north aft. 1619.1


After completing his education at Oxford and Gray’s Inn, Eure was licensed to travel abroad for three years. It cannot have been long after his return that he became involved in an acrimonious dispute with his father’s neighbour, Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby, who alleged that Eure and his friends had come to his house after hunting on 26 Aug. 1600, created disturbances, committed assaults, ‘foul misdemeanours’, ‘outrages’, called the plaintiff a ‘scurvy urchin’, ‘spindle-shanked ape’ and other epithets, all because they ‘maliced’ Hoby for executing equal justice. Eure denied the charges, declaring that he had gone to lodge with Hoby ‘in kindness’, and received poor hospitality, contrary to their ‘northern entertainments’. The case was settled by a payment to Hoby of £100.2

Meanwhile Eure was returned for the local borough of Scarborough, where his great grandfather had been constable of the castle. This is remarkable as Eure was, like others of his family, a recusant, and he was presumably only admitted to membership of the council in the north because the president, Lord Scrope, was lenient towards Catholics. In reporting the results of a search for arms amongst the recusants in October 1625, the bishop of Durham allowed a piece of ordnance in Witton castle, Lord Eure’s seat, to remain out of respect for his rank. Eure was disarmed in 1625 upon the orders of the Privy Council, and described in the following year as ‘a convict popish recusant’. He died at Malton castle and was buried at Old Malton on 28 June 1646.3

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N.M.S.


  • 1. CP; Foster, Vis. Yorks. 615; Reid, Council of the North, 388.
  • 2. CSP Dom. 1598-1601; 355; HMC Hatfield, x. 391; xi. 11, 546; xii. 34; xiv. 188-9; Meads, Diary of Lady Hoby, 197-8.
  • 3. Harl. 160 art. 15, f. 91; H. Aveling, Northern Catholics, 203, 217, 284; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 134; 1639-40, p. 215; APC, 1625-6, pp. 229, 282.