Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Beaumont, Francis (d.1598)
BEAUMONT, FRANCIS (d. 1598), judge, was the eldest son of John Beaumont, sometime master of the rolls, by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of William Hastings. His father was removed from the bench in 1552 for scandalously abusing his position [see Beaumont, John]. Of Francis's early education nothing is recorded. He appears as a fellow-commoner of Peterhouse, Cambridge, when Elizabeth visited the university. There is no entry of his matriculation, nor of his having graduated. He studied law in the Inner Temple, was called to the bar, and practised with success and reputation. He represented Aldborough in the parliament of 1572. In 1581 he was elected autumn reader in the Inner Temple. In 1589 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law (Nichols's Leicestershire, iii. 655). He was promoted to the bench as a judge of the common pleas on 25 Jan. 1592-3. He was never knighted: he is described in his will, made the day before his death, as 'Esquire.'
He married Anne, daughter of Sir George Pierrepoint, knt., of Holme-Pierrepoint, Nottinghamshire, and widow of Thomas Thorold, of Marston, Lincolnshire. She predeceased him. They had a family of three sons and one daughter. The sons were Henry, who was knighted in 1603 and died in 1605, ætat. 24; John [see Beaumont, Sir John]; Francis, the great dramatist [q. v.]. The daughter was Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Seyliard, of Kent. Beaumont died at Grace-Dieu on 22 April 1598, and was buried on 12 June following, with heraldic attendance, in the church of Belton, within which parish Grace-Dieu lies. Burton, the historian of Leicestershire, who was three-and-twenty when Beaumont died, calls him a 'grave, learned, and reverend judge.'
[Cooper's Athen. Cantab, ii. 246; Dyce's Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, i. xix, xxii, lxxxvii, lxxxxix; Introduction to Dr. Grosart's edition of the Poems of Sir John Beaumont in Fuller's Worthies Library (1869); Cal. Chanc. Proc.temp. Eliz. i. 61; Coke's Reports, ix. 138; Foss's Judges of England, v. 408, 411, 414, 421, 456; Dugdale's Orig. Jurid. 166, 186; Chron. Ser. 98; Nichols's Leicestershire, iii. 649, 655, 656, 666*, and pl. lxxvii. fig. 4; Originalia Eliz. p. 3, r. 126; Strype's Annals, iii. 92; Talbot Papers, G. 472, 505, 529, H. 207; Willis's Not. Parl. iii. (2) 95.]