Robert Lord

Marshal of Ipswich. Hammatt (p. 209): “He was Marshal of the Court, as early as 1669; and is usually designated as Marshal Lord.” He had a share in Plum Island (1664), and was “one of twenty-four of ‘the young generation,’ who joined the church by taking the covenant, between January 18 and February 1, 1673.” His widow Hannah “had horses on the common, 1697.” Hammatt gives his sons as Robert (b. 1657), John, Thomas, Joseph (b. 1674), James (b. 27 Jan 1676) and Nathaniel (b. 1681).

A writ of Sept 1662 was “signed by Robert Lord, for the court; and served by Robert Lord, marshal of Ipswich” (Essex Quarterly Courts 2:434), which suggests he was marshal seven years before Hammatt’s date, with his father as clerk. That year two men sued him for doing his job: John Hathorne “For illegal and unjust taking away of his horse in pretence of an execution” (withdrawn), and Henry Collins “For illegally levying an execution upon his person” (verdict for Lord) (2:351).

In a horse case of March 1664 he deposed, “aged about thirty-one years,” that he knew Thomas Lovewell’s horse “very well,” because it “went with his father-in-law Day’s and deponent’s horses two or three summers”; he had seen it the summer before “with a brand R” (3:122-123). Also in 1664 he testified that on “the first day of general training” at the wolfpen plain some men refused to help clear the ground. Samuel Hunt backed them, “saying that the Major had done more than he could answer,” and said that if any officer commanded him “to dig up stumps, he would not” (3:139).

Deacon Thomas Low acted as his deputy in 1669 (4:171). In 1679 he served a writ “by attachment of a small swine, a coverlet and defendant’s clothes” (7:259).