In 1519 Richard Pollard entered on his legal training in the Middle Temple, where his father had also trained. He was a JP for Devon in 1532, and was elected MP for Taunton in 1536 and twice for Devon in 1539 and 1542 and was Sheriff of Devon in 1537-8. By 1537 he had been appointed King's Remembrancer of the Exchequer and a law reporter. Also by 1537 he had been appointed General Surveyor of the Court of Augmentations. He was thus an assistant of Thomas Cromwell in administering the surrender of religious houses following the Dissolution of the monasteries, and was employed particularly as a surveyor who visited the premises and made a detailed valuation of the house's assets and income, the Valor Ecclesiasticus, as a preliminary to their sale. He was thus a highly influential person and was able to perform many favours for his friends. He helped, for example, Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, whose wife Honor Grenville was from North Devon, to secure advantageous terms in his purchase of Frithelstock Priory, in which action he was assisted by his fellow influential North Devonian lawyer George Rolle. He is known to have been loaned by Honor Grenville her manor house at Umberleigh where he lodged his family in the summer of 1538. Frequent references to his activities are recorded in the Lisle Letters, though none of his letters survive, and in the Letters & Papers of Henry VIII. One of his most notorious acts was his supervision of the destruction and pillaging of the shrine to Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in September 1538, which on account of the quantity of gold and precious stones within it took several days to complete. The spoil of the shrine was stated by Stow in his Annales to have "filled two great chests such as six or seven strong men could do no more than convey one of them at once out of the church". Following this operation Pollard proceeded to Reading and Winchester to effect similar destructions. He resided sometime at Putney, Surrey. In 1539, he was appointed to the Council of the West, and was knighted on 16 January 1542.
Lands acquired
In 1537 he was granted by King Henry VIII the manor of Combe Martin in Devon His influential position within the Court of Augmentations enabled him to acquire cheap bargains from the possessions of the dissolved religious houses. In 1540 he purchased Forde Abbey and in 1538 he acquired on favourable terms a 99-year lease of Marsh Priory, formerly a possession of Plympton Priory in Devon. His technique was similar to that used by George Rolle in that he used his local knowledge to buy land which had a ready and profitable resale market when split into smaller lots, often being sold to the former tenants.
