John Colepeper, 1st Baron Culpeper of Thoresway was an English royalist landowner, military adviser and politician who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1642-43) and Master of the Rolls (1643) was an influential counsellor of King Charles I during the English Civil War, who rewarded him with a peerage and some landholdings in Virginia. During the Commonwealth he lived abroad in Europe, where he continued to act as a servant, advisor and supporter of King Charles II in exile. Having taken part in the Prince's escape into exile in 1646, Colepeper accompanied Charles in his triumphant return to England in May 1660, but died only two months later.
Sir Thomas Fleming was an English judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1581 and 1611. He was judge in the trial of Guy Fawkes following the Gunpowder Plot. He held several important offices, including Lord Chief Justice, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Solicitor General for England and Wales.
Sir Bourchier Wrey, 6th Baronet of Tawstock, Devon, was a Member of Parliament for Barnstaple, Devon, in 1747–1754. The manor of Tawstock, about two miles south of Barnstaple, had been since the time of Henry de Tracy the residence of the feudal barons of Barnstaple, ancestors of the Wrey family.
Knowstone is a village and civil parish situated in the North Devon district of Devon, England, halfway between the Mid Devon town of Tiverton, Devon and the North Devon town of South Molton. The hamlet of East Knowstone lies due east of the village. Knowstone was the birthplace of Admiral Sir John Berry (1635–1691), second son of Rev. Daniel Berry (1609–1654), vicar of Knowstone cum Molland. An elaborate mural monument erected by Sir John in 1684 to the memory of his parents survives in Molland Church.
The Baronetcy of Goodricke of Ribston was created in the Baronetage of England by King Charles I on 14 August 1641 for his loyal supporter John Goodricke of Ribston, Yorkshire. He represented Yorkshire in the Cavalier Parliament from 1661 to his death.
Sir Henry Maynard (1547–1610) was an English politician and secretary to Lord Burghley, and became a substantial landowner.
William Aislabie of Studley Royal, North Yorkshire was an English landowner and Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons for over 60 years from 1721 to 1781. His long unbroken service in the House of Commons was only surpassed, more than 100 years after his death, by the 63 years achieved by Charles Pelham Villiers at Wolverhampton.
Sir John Northcote, 1st Baronet was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1640 and 1676. He supported the Parliamentarian cause in the English Civil War.
Sir William Knyvett was an English knight in the late Middle Ages. He was the son of John Knyvett and Alice Lynne, and assumed the titles of Sheriff of Norfolk & Suffolk, Burgess of Melcombe, Bletchingley, & Grantham, Constable of Rising Castle.
Sir Samuel Grimston, 3rd Baronet of Gorhambury House, Hertfordshire was an English politician.
Sir William Whitmore was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1621 and 1626.
Sir Robert Brooke was an English landowner, magistrate, commissioner, administrator and MP who sat in the House of Commons between 1624 and 1629. He made his country seat at Cockfield Hall, Yoxford, Suffolk.
George Rolle of Stevenstone in the parish of St Giles in the Wood near Great Torrington in Devon, was the founder of the wealthy, influential and widespread Rolle family of Devon, which according to the Return of Owners of Land, 1873 in the person of Hon. Mark Rolle, the adoptive heir of John Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle, had become by that year the largest landowner in Devon with about 55,000 acres. He was a Dorset-born London lawyer who in 1507 became Keeper of the Records of the Court of Common Pleas and was elected as a Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1542 and 1545. He became the steward of Dunkeswell Abbey in Devon, and following the Dissolution of the Monasteries he purchased much ex-monastic land in Devon. Not only was he the founder of his own great Devonshire landowning dynasty but he was also an ancestor of others almost as great, including the Acland baronets of Killerton, the Wrey Baronets of Tawstock and the Trefusis family of Trefusis in Cornwall now of Heanton Satchville, Huish, later Baron Clinton, heirs both of Rolle of Heanton Satchville, Petrockstowe and of Rolle of Stevenstone.
The Manor of Molland was a medieval manor in North Devon, England. It was largely co-terminous with the existing parish of Molland, in which is situated the village of Molland. More accurately it consisted from the earliest times of two separate manors, held from separate overlords, later known as Molland-Bottreaux and Molland-Champson.
Richard Bampfield (1526–1594) of Poltimore and Bampfylde House in Exeter, both in Devon, was Sheriff of Devon in 1576. He began construction of the tudor era Poltimore House in 1550, and completed the building of Bampfylde House, Exeter, along with The Great House, Bristol one of the finest Elizabethan town houses in the West Country, in 1590. He is the ancestor of the Bampfylde Baronets and Barons Poltimore.
Sir John Lethbridge, 1st Baronet (1746–1815), of Whitehall Place, Westminster; Sandhill Park, Somerset; Westaway in the parish of Pilton, Devon, and Winkleigh Court, Winkleigh, Devon, was Member of Parliament for Minehead in Somerset from 1806 to 1807. He served as Sheriff of Somerset in 1788–9. In 2010 he was discovered to have been the natural father of Claire Clairmont, and thus the grandfather of Lord Byron's daughter Allegra.
The Drewe family of Broadhembury were for many generations owners and inhabitants of The Grange, Broadhembury, Devon, in the west of England, from the 16th to 19th centuries.
John Upton (1639-1687) of Lupton in the parish of Brixham in Devon, was a Member of Parliament for Dartmouth in Devon from February 1679 to August 1679.
Sir Robert Wood of Norwich, Norfolk, was an English politician.
Francis Mountford, (1474/76–1536), of the Inner Temple, London and Feltwell, Norfolk, was an English Member of Parliament.
