" Hoo" is a Saxon word meaning the spur of a hill, or a hilly peninsula; it is found mostly along the coasts of Kent and East Anglia, and the most famous such place is Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, a major Viking archaeological site. But our Hoo ancestors came from Bedfordshire. The manor is now called Luton Hoo, and one of Britain's finest country houses is there - though it was built by later owners, the earls of Bute. A sixteenth-century Visititation traces the Hoos back to the tenth century. Below is that line as presented in stirnet; I agree with them that it is probably spurious, and have added in brackets some reasons for thinking so:

1. Robert, lord of Hoo (d 26.10.1000)m. Anne (dau of John, Lord Griffth of Wales) [I find no one with that exact name in the Welsh genealogies of the period, and in any case the name and title sound anachronistic. An exact death date for Norfolk in the year 1000 strains credibility.]

2. Thomas, lord of Hoo (d 1042)m. Agnes (d 19.10.1048, dau of Sir William Wawton) [I can find no Wawton family, and the name seems very unlikely for pre-Conquest England. So does an exact death date for 1048.]

3. Robert, lord of Hoo (d 23.02.1129) [note the large gap in dates here, not to mention the exactness]m. Wilmott (d 24.11.1148, dau of John Malmaynes of Normandy) [there is such a family, but in Surrey, not Normandy; another exact death date]

4. Robert, lord of Hoo (d 01.08.1166)m. Rosamond (d 1191, dau of Thomas, Lord Chelron) [I can find no such title]

5. Alexander, lord of Hoom. Darnell (dau of Alexander, King of Scots) [possible, but unlikely - the genealogies of the Scottish royal family do not mention this Darnell, and if she had existed, the Hoos would have been among the many 'Competitors' for the throne after the Maid of Norway's death - see Coucy]

6. Robert, lord of Hoo

7. Robert, lord of Hoo (d 09.05.1310)m. Beatrix (d 28.05.1314, dau of Alexander, lord of Andevill in Normandy) [possible; there is such a place, and there was an Andeville family in Warwickshire; Burke's mentions Alexander in this period]

The first well-documented ancestor is  Robert de Hoo o f Hoo, Knebbeworth, etc (died c.. 1339), who married  Hawise  (died 1344), daughter of  Fulk FitzWarin of Whittington, 1st Lord Fitzwarine. Their daughter (1) Cecily  married John  Bacon of Hessett, and is a Magruder ancestor via that family. Their son (2)  Sir Thomas Hoo o f Hoo (died 1380) married (c. 1335)  Isabel  (c. 1320-1393), daughter of Sir John St. Leger. They had at least four children: (1) Thomas, died young; (2) Sir Will iam Hoo , see below; (3) Joan  (died 1394), married Henry Ferrers, 4th Lord of Groby; and (4) Robert, may have died young.

Sir William Hoo o f Hoo (died 1410) married  Alice  (died 1456), daughter of Sir Thomas St. Maur, or St. Omer, by Pernel  (Jane), dau of Nicholas  Malmayns of Ockley. They were the parents of  Sir Thomas Hoo o f Luton Hoo (died 1420), who in 1394 or 1395 married first (as her second husband)  Eleanor, daughter of Sir Thomas de Felton  of Litcham. They had one child,  Thomas, see below. His second wife (maybe; see below) was  Elizabeth, daughter of  Sir William Echingham  of Echingham and  Joan FitzAlan . They are supposed to have had another son Thomas, who may or may not have descendants. Some sources make this second Thomas our ancestor, as father (by a wife whose surname was Norwood) of Joyce , wife of John Tooke of Beere. I think that Elizabeth Echingham is in fact his Thomas' son's wife, not his second wife. It seems unlikely that there would have been two sons named Thomas, though not impossible; and what follows is even more unlikely:

The 'first'  Thomas de Hoo, Lord of Hoo and Hastings (died 1455) is supposed to have married twice: first to Elizabeth Wychingham  (daughter probably of Nicholas Wynchingham of Wynchingham; we have a descent from his brother), by whom he had one daughter,  Anne, wife of Geof frey Boleyn, Lord Mayor of London; and second to  Eleanor, daughter of Sir Lion el de Welles, 6th Lord, Lieutenant of Ireland, by whom he had further children: (2) another Anne , married Sir Roger Copley ; (3) Eleanor, married Thomas Echingham (no children) and James Carew of Beddington (many descendants; and (4) Elizabeth, married Thomas Massingberd and Sir John Devenish of Heiling Leigh or Hellingleigh (descendants by the second marriage).

I suppose there has been some confusion here between two generations of Thomases, complicated by the similarity between Etchingham and Wychingham, and by a surfeit of Thomases. Elizabeth Etchingham and Elizabeth Wynchingham may be the same person, and it seems likely that Anne Hoo Boleyn's  mother was the daughter of Sir William Echingham  of Echingham and Joan FitzAlan. Th e dates fit better. There was no Nicholas in the Etchingham family at the time. The many Hoos that we see in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are probably not descendants of the second Thomas (son of Thomas, died 1420, above, and his supposed second wife), but rather, descendants of the same Thomas whose mother was Eleanor Felton.

In any case, our descent comes from one (or maybe two) lines: the marriage of Anne Hoo to  Sir Roger Copley . She was the daughter of the Sir Thomas Hoo who died in 1455, by Eleanor Welles. The second possible line is from Joyce Hoo, wife of John  Tooke, though which of the myriad Thomases was her father is debatable.

The arms are described as: Quarterly, sable and argent, though other versions were used; sometimes the same with a bordure ermine.

-- From the now defunct Martinrealm .org