Sir William Pole (1561–1635) was an English country gentleman, colonial investor, politician and antiquary.
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Baptised on 27 August 1561 at Colyton, Devon, he was son of Sir William Pole, knt., of Shute, and his wife Catherine, daughter of John Popham. He entered the Inner Temple in 1578, was placed on the commission of the peace for Devonshire, served as High Sheriff of Devon in 1602–3, and represented Bossiney, Cornwall, in the parliament of 1586.
Pole was knighted by James I at Whitehall Palace on 15 February 1606. He paid into the Virginia Company, and was an incorporator of the third Virginia charter. He died at Colcombe, in the parish of Colyton,, on 9 February 1635, aged 73. He was buried in the west side of the chancel in Colyton church.
Pole at his death left manuscript collections for the history and antiquities of Devon. Much was lost during the English Civil War, but there survived:
These collections were used by (among others) John Prince, Tristram Risdon, and John Tuckett, in his edition of the ‘Visitation of Devonshire in 1620,’ published in 1859.
He married, first, Mary (died 1605), daughter and coheir of Sir William Peryam, by whom he had issue six sons and six daughters. Of the sons, the eldest, William, died young; the second, Sir John, whose descendants occupied Shute House, was created a baronet on 12 September 1628, and died on 16 April 1658; the third was Peryam Pole, whose descendant, William Pole, dying in 1778 without issue, bequeathed his estates to his kinsman, the Hon. William Wellesley, who thereupon assumed the name Pole, and subsequently became Earl of Mornington. Another of Sir William Pole's sons, also named William, matriculated from Oriel College, Oxford, on 24 March 1610, graduated B.A. on 3 November 1612, entered the Inner Temple in 1616, and emigrated to America, where he died on 24 February 1674. Sir William's daughter Elizabeth Poole (1588–1654) also emigrated to America, and took a prominent part in the foundation and incorporation of Taunton, Massachusetts in 1639–40, where she died on 21 May 1654.
Pole married, secondly, Jane, daughter of William Simmes or Symes of Chard, Somerset, and widow of Roger How of London.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Pole, William (1561-1635)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.