Sir Peter Ball was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons

House of Commons of England

The House of Commons of England was the lower house of the Parliament of England from its development in the 14th century to the union of England and Scotland in 1707, when it was replaced by the House of Commons of Great Britain...

  between 1626 and 1640. He was attorney general to Queen Henrietta Maria.

Ball was the son of Giles Ball of Mamhead

Mamhead

Mamhead is a rural village and civil parish near Dawlish and Kenton in Devon, South West England, in the Teignbridge local authority area.On high ground on the Haldon Hills, dense woodlands open out into views of the coast and the estuary of the River Exe....

, Devon. He was called to the bar at Middle Temple

Middle Temple

The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn...

 in 1623 and became recorder of Exeter. He was elected Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 for Tiverton

Tiverton (UK Parliament constituency)

Tiverton was a constituency located in east Devon, formerly represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Enfranchised as a parliamentary borough in 1615 and first represented in 1621, it elected two Members of Parliament by the first past the post system of election...

 in 1626 and was re-elected in 1628. He sat until 1629 when King Charles decided to rule without parliament for eleven years. In 1636, he became an associate to the bench.

In April 1640, Ball was re-elected MP for Tiverton in the Short Parliament

Short Parliament

The Short Parliament was a Parliament of England that sat from 13 April to 5 May 1640 during the reign of King Charles I of England, so called because it lasted only three weeks....

. He then became attorney-general to Queen Henrietta Maria and was Lent reader in 1641. He was knighted at Oxford on 7 October 1643 and was awarded D.C.L. at Oxford University on 19 February 1644.

Ball died in 1680 and was buried at Mamhead on 4 September 1680.

Ball married Ann Cooke, daughter of Sir William Cooke

William Cooke (of Highnam)

Sir William Cooke was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1597 and 1614....

, of Gloucestershire. They had seventeen children including William

William Ball (astronomer)

William Ball was an English astronomer. He was one of the founding Fellows of the Royal Society. He was appointed the Society's first treasurer on 28 November 1660, and served until 1663....

 the astronomer and Peter

Peter Ball (physician)

Peter Ball or Balle, M.D. , was an English physician.Ball was the third son of Sir Peter Ball of Mamhead Devon and his wife Anne Cooke, daughter of William Cooke. In 1652 he was admitted to the Middle Temple, London and called to the bar in 1657...

the physician.