Nuneham Courtenay is a village and civil parish about 5 miles (8 km) southeast of Oxford; it occupies a pronounced section of left bank of the River Thames.
Sir John Baker (1488–1558) was an English politician. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1545 to his death, having previously been Speaker of the House of Commons of England.
Sir William Stanford, also written Stamford or Staunford, was an English politician, judge and jurist.
Sir James Dyer was a judge and Speaker of the House of Commons during the reign of Edward VI of England.
Sir Edward Saunders was an English judge and Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench.
Sir John Maynard KS was an English lawyer and politician, prominent under the reigns of Charles I, the Commonwealth, Charles II, James II and William III.
Sir Edward Phelips was an English lawyer and politician, the Speaker of the English House of Commons from 1604 until 1611, and subsequently Master of the Rolls from 1611 until his death in 1614. He was an elected MP from 1584, and in 1588, following a successful career as a lawyer, he commissioned Montacute House to be built as a Summer house for himself and his family. He was knighted in 1603 and one of his major roles was as the opening prosecutor during the trial of the Gunpowder Plotters.
Sir Robert Broke SL was a British justice, politician and legal writer. Although a landowner in rural Shropshire, he made his fortune through more than 20 years' service to the City of London. MP for the City in five parliaments, he served as Speaker of the House of Commons in 1554. He is celebrated as the author of one of the Books of authority. A prominent religious conservative, he founded a notable recusant dynasty. His surname is also rendered Brooke, and occasionally Brook, which are, for modern readers, better indicators of pronunciation.
Sir Nicholas Hare of Bruisyard, Suffolk was Speaker of the House of Commons of England between 1539 and 1540.
Sir John Doddridge (1555–1628) was an English lawyer, appointed Justice of the King's Bench in 1612 and served as Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1589 and for Horsham in 1604. He was also an antiquarian and writer. He acquired the nickname "the sleeping judge" from his habit of shutting his eyes while listening intently to a case. As a lawyer he was influenced by humanist ideas, and was familiar with the ideas of Aristotle, and the debates of the period between his followers and the Ramists. He was a believer in both the rationality of the English common law and in its connection with custom. He was one of the Worthies of Devon of the biographer John Prince (d.1723).
Sir John Croke was an English judge and politician who served as Speaker of the English House of Commons between October and December 1601. He also served as Recorder of London, and won the City of London constituency in his election to the 1601 parliament, being the last Speaker before the death of Elizabeth I, in 1603.
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 Courtenay of Powderham in Devon was a prominent member of the Devonshire gentry. He was Sheriff of Devon in 1579–80 and received the rare honour of having been three times elected MP for the prestigious county seat (Devon) in 1584, 1589 and 1601.
Sir William Courtenay was a landowner in Devon and de jure 2nd Earl of Devon. He was the son of George Courtenay and Catherine, daughter of Sir George St Ledger of Annery. He succeeded his grandfather Sir William Courtenay, of Powderham in 1535. He was knighted in 1553 and MP for Plympton in 1555.
Sir Lewis Pollard of Grilstone in the parish of Bishop's Nympton, Devon, was Justice of the Common Pleas from 1514 to 1526 and served as MP for Totnes in 1491 and was a JP in Devon in 1492. He was knighted after 1509. He was one of several Devonshire men to be "innated with a genius to study law", as identified by Fuller, who became eminent lawyers at a national level. He was a kinsman of the judge and Speaker of the House of Commons Sir John Pollard.
John Peryam, of Exeter, Devon, was elected four times as a Member of Parliament, for Barnstaple 1584, Bossiney 1586, Exeter 1589 and 1593. He served as Mayor of Exeter. He was the younger brother of Sir William Peryam (1534-1604) of Little Fulford, near Crediton in Devon, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer.
The Recorder of Barnstaple was a recorder, a form of senior judicial officer, usually an experienced barrister, within the jurisdiction of the Borough of Barnstaple in Devon. He was usually a member of the local North Devonshire gentry. The position of recorder of any borough carried a great deal of prestige and power of patronage. The recorder of a borough was often entrusted by the mayor and corporation to nominate its Members of Parliament, as was the case with Sir Hugh I Pollard, Recorder of Barnstaple, who in 1545 nominated the two MP's to represent the Borough of Barnstaple. In the 19th century a recorder was the sole judge who presided at a Quarter Sessions of a Borough, a "Court of Record", and was a barrister of at least five years' standing. He fixed the dates of the Quarter Sessions at his own discretion "as long as he holds it once every quarter of a year", or more often if he deemed fit.
Sir Edward More of Odiham in Hampshire was an English Member of Parliament. He was a Justice of the Peace for Surrey and Sussex from c. 1582 to c. 1587, and for Hampshire from c. 1584. He succeeded his father in 1581 and was knighted in 1600.
Sir Christopher Harris of Radford in the parish of Plymstock in Devon, was a Member of Parliament for Plymouth in Devon in 1584. He was knighted in 1607. He should not be confused with his great-nephew and heir apparent Christopher Harris (d.1623) of Lanrest in the parish of Liskeard in Cornwall, a Member of Parliament for West Looe in Cornwall (1621).
