In 1546 Sir Arthur married Mary, widow of
Sir George Carew, and daughter of
Henry Norris (d. 1536), who had been implicated in the fall of
Anne Boleyn and was beheaded. The couple had five sons and a daughter: • Gawen (d. 1592), married Roberte de Montgomery, daughter of Comte Gabriel de Montgomery and Isabel de la Touche. • Philip • Charles • George • Edward • Elizabeth, who married
Sir Edward Seymour, 1st Baronet In 1554 he exchanged with
Thomas Aylworth, Lord of Dartington, the mansion house at
Polsloe, Exeter for the Dartington estate, which contained the medieval
Dartington Hall. By 1560 the construction of a new Elizabethan front on the foundation of the older buildings was underway and this continued for several years. His descendants continued to live in Dartington Hall until it became partly derelict and was sold in 1925.
Official Posts: • 1552 - MP for Barnstaple • 1555 – MP for Plympton • 1559 - MP for Plymouth • 1559 – Sheriff of Devon • 1562 –
Vice-Admiral of the Devon Coasts, a post he held for life. • 1563 – MP for Totnes. On the accession of Elizabeth I he developed his maritime interests: from being Sheriff of Devon in 1559–60, he put to sea. As vice-admiral appointed in 1563, his service against French pirates was noted: constant harassment along the western approaches. However, from time to time he co-operated with the privateers of
Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, against Catholic Spain. In December 1568, many of these ships were driven up the channel and into Southampton and Portsmouth to be received by Sir Arthur and
Edward Horsey, in the name of the Queen of England. In 1568 he had organised
the robbery of the Spanish treasure fleet which was taking money to the
Duke of Alva, Regent of the Netherlands. Champernowne personally delivered 64 boxes of treasure weighing some 8 tonnes safely to the tower of London, worth some 2 million
reales. Over half of the money was used by Queen Elizabeth to fund her navy, the remainder she sent on to
Amsterdam. He was a prominent supporter of
protestantism and in 1572, his son Gawen married the daughter of
Gabriel, Count of Montgomery, a
Huguenot. The Count, whose immediate forebears were Scots, was Captain of the
Scots Guards. Champernowne was at Dwercy, France for the marriage and reported back to
Lord Burghley on the conditions in France. Following the
massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, the Count escaped France and was given refuge at
Dartington Hall. Champernowne wrote to
Queen Elizabeth proposing the raising of an army to provide relief for the protestants in France. In 1574 he led a relief expedition which went spectacularly wrong. Montgomery had already been captured and executed in Normandy, and the English fleet could only aid the Huguenot captains of La Rochelle. Sir Arthur's daughter Elizabeth married Sir Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy in 1576. Champernowne was continuing to support the naval exploits against France, when he wrote his will in March 1578. He died at Dartington Hall on 1 April. == References ==