Robert Harley 1579-1656

Sir Robert HARLEY 1579-1656

Biographical Note

Of Brampton Bryan, Herefordshire, son of Thomas Harley. Graduated BA Oriel College, Oxford and entered the Middle Temple in 1599. Made a knight at the Order of the Bath in 1603. Appointed burgess for Radnor and JP for Herefordshire in 1604, Sherriff of Radnor in 1606, and burgess for Eversham in 1628. He served as Master of the Mint for Charles I but later supported the parliamentarians in the run up to and during the Civil War. He married three times: to Ann (d.1603), daughter of Charles Barrett, Mary (d.1623), daughter of Sir Francis Newport, and to Brilliana (d.1643), the daughter of Sir Edward Conway.

Books

A 1637 library catalogue reveals a quantity of literary works; when the library was lost after pillaging by Royalist troops in 1644, Harley estimated the value of the lost books at £200.

Sources

• Cliffe, J. The world of the country house in seventeenth-century England, 1999, 164-5.
• Eales, Jacqueline. "Harley, Sir Robert (bap. 1579, d. 1656), politician." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.