He joined the army and by 1639 was a captain engaged in raising troops in Devon for the Scottish wars. The following year he was ordered to Scotland and was probably present at the Battle of Newburn.
In November 1640 Pollard was elected Member of Parliament for Bere Alston in the Long Parliament. He became involved in the Royalist army plots of 1641 and, after being found guilty of misprision, was expelled from the House of Commons. He succeeded to the baronetcy that same year. During the Civil war Pollard mainly served with the king's army in Devonshire and Cornwall and in 1645 was made governor of Dartmouth. Fairfax's Parliamentary troops besieged the town in January 1645/6 and Pollard was captured and held prisoner until 1646. In 1653 he was fined £518 for his "delinquency". It may have been the severity of this fine which caused him to sell to his cousin Sir Arthur Northcote, 2nd Baronet the manor of King's Nympton in Devon, purchased as his seat by his great-great-great grandfather Sir Lewis Pollard, of Grilstone, Bishop's Nympton, Justice of the Common Pleas and MP for Totnes.
Secondly to Mary Stevens, a daughter of William Stevens of Great Torrington, and widow of Henry Rolle of Beam near Great Torrington who inherited in 1638 the vast estate of Stevenstone near Great Torrington. William Stevens was the founder of the Devon branch of the influential Stevens family of Vielstone in the parish of Buckland Brewer, of Cross in Little Torrington and of Winscott in Peters Marland. The Cornish seat of Callington was controlled by the Rolle family and it must have been due to the influence of his second wife Mary Stevens that Pollard was elected to that seat in 1660. Mary Stevens was buried at St Giles in the Wood, the parish church of Stevenstone.
On his death without male progeny the baronetcy passed to his younger brotherSir Amyas Pollard, 3rd Baronet, of Abbots Bickington, Devon. Due to the debts built up by Sir Hugh, largely from his lavish entertaining, much apparently on government business, his brother inherited very little of the ancient family estate and almost immediately had to sell the family manor of King's Nympton. Upon the death of Sir Amyas unmarried and without legitimate male heir, the baronetcy became extinct.
