Sir John Stowford (c.1290 [1] – c.1372 [2] ) of Stowford, West Down in Devon, was Chief Baron of the Exchequer [3] in 1346. He is one of John Prince's Worthies of Devon .
Sir John Stowford (c.1290 [1] – c.1372 [2] ) of Stowford, West Down in Devon, was Chief Baron of the Exchequer [3] in 1346. He is one of John Prince's Worthies of Devon .
He was born at the family estate of Stowford in the parish of West Down in North Devon. [4]
It is not known at which Inn of Court he trained as a lawyer, but he was called to the bar and became a serjeant at law. In 1341 he was appointed King's Serjeant to King Edward III. [5] In 1346 he was knighted and was appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer. [6] In 1349 he was appointed one of the Justices Itinerant for the county of Kent.
Stowford built Pilton Causeway which links the towns of Barnstaple and Pilton, which were then separated by the treacherous marshy ground in which flowed the tidal meanders of the small River Yeo. It is recounted by Prince that Stowford decided on building the causeway when on his way from his home at Stowford to Barnstaple, he met whilst fording the Yeo, the drowned bodies of a woman with her child. [7] He is also believed to have contributed to the financing of the long-bridge in Barnstaple. [8]
He married Joan Tracy, a co-heiress of the Tracy family of Woolacombe Tracy, Devon. [9]
He died at Stowford and was buried in the Stowford Chapel in the north transept of West Down Church, where survives his much-worn [10] life-size effigy carved in oak, dressed in his robes of office, [11] set on the floor under a low recessed arch set into the north wall. [12] The colouring of the effigy was renewed in 1873, [13] but no trace survives today.
The ancient and historic village of Pilton is today a suburb within the town of Barnstaple, one of the oldest boroughs in England. It is located about quarter of a mile north of the town centre in the English county of Devon, in the district of North Devon. In 2009, the Pilton (Barnstaple) ward had a population of 4,239 living in some 1,959 dwellings. It has its own infants and junior school, houses one of Barnstaple's larger secondary schools, and one of Barnstaple's SEN specialist schools. North Devon Hospital is also within West Pilton parish. It has a Church Hall, two public houses, two hotels, and residential homes. It has residential estates of both private and public housing including flats. It also has a historic Church that dates back to at least the 11th Century.
John Bourchier, 1st Earl of Bath was created Earl of Bath in 1536. He was feudal baron of Bampton in Devon.
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 Acland of Columb John in the parish of Broadclyst, Devon, was an English knight, landowner, philanthropist, Member of Parliament and Sheriff of Devon. He was one of John Prince's Worthies of Devon.
Sir John Chichester (1519/20-1569) of Raleigh in the parish of Pilton, near Barnstaple in North Devon, was a leading member of the Devonshire gentry, a naval captain, and ardent Protestant who served as Sheriff of Devon in 1550-1551, and as Knight of the Shire for Devon in 1547, April 1554, and 1563, and as Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1559, over which borough his lordship of the manor of Raleigh had considerable influence.
Stevenstone is a former manor within the parish of St Giles in the Wood, near Great Torrington, North Devon. It was the chief seat of the Rolle family, one of the most influential and wealthy of Devon families, from c. 1524 until 1907. The Rolle estates as disclosed by the Return of Owners of Land, 1873 comprised 55,592 acres producing an annual gross income of £47,170, and formed the largest estate in Devon, followed by the Duke of Bedford's estate centred on Tavistock comprising 22,607 with an annual gross value of nearly £46,000.
From AD 1066, the feudal barony of Barnstaple was a large feudal barony with its caput at the town of Barnstaple in north Devon, England. It was one of eight feudal baronies in Devonshire which existed in the Middle Ages. In 1236 it comprised 56 knight's fees or individual member manors. The feudal service owed for half the barony in 1274 was the provision to the royal army of two knights or four sergeants for forty days per annum, later commuted to scutage.
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.
The historic manor of Raleigh, near Barnstaple and in the parish of Pilton, North Devon, was the first recorded home in the 14th century of the influential Chichester family of Devon. It was recorded in the Doomsday Book of 1086 together with three other manors which lay within the later created parish of Pilton. Pilton as a borough had existed long before the Norman Conquest and was one of the most important defensive towns in Devon under the Anglo-Saxons. The manor lies above the River Yeo on the southern slope of the hill on top of which exists the ruins of the Anglo-Saxon hillfort of Roborough. The historic manor of Raleigh is now the site of the North Devon District Hospital.
Shirwell is a village, civil parish and former manor in the local government district of North Devon, in the county of Devon, England. It was also formerly the name of a hundred of Devon. The village lies about 3.5 miles north-east of the town of Barnstaple, to the east of the A39 road to Lynton. The parish is surrounded clockwise from the north by the parishes of East Down, Arlington, Loxhore, Bratton Fleming, Goodleigh, Barnstaple, West Pilton and Marwood. In 2001 its population was 333, little changed from the 1901 figure of 338.
Hall is a large estate within the parish and former manor of Bishop's Tawton, Devon. It was for several centuries the seat of a younger branch of the prominent and ancient North Devon family of Chichester of Raleigh, near Barnstaple. The mansion house is situated about 2 miles south-east of the village of Bishop's Tawton and 4 miles south-east of Barnstaple, and sits on a south facing slope of the valley of the River Taw, overlooking the river towards the village of Atherington. The house and about 2,500 acres of surrounding land continues today to be owned and occupied by descendants, via a female line, of the Chichester family. The present Grade II* listed neo-Jacobean house was built by Robert Chichester between 1844 and 1847 and replaced an earlier building. Near the house to the south at the crossroads of Herner the Chichester family erected in the 1880s a private chapel of ease which contains mediaeval woodwork saved from the demolished Old Guildhall in Barnstaple.
Sir Edmund Prideaux, 1st Baronet (1554–1628), of Netherton in the parish of Farway, Devon, was a Councellor at Law and Double Reader of the Inner Temple and was created a baronet on 17 July 1622. He purchased the estate of Netherton where in 1607 he built a new mansion house, known today as Netherton Hall, a grade II listed building. He was one of John Prince's Worthies of Devon.
Sir John Hele of Wembury in Devon, serjeant-at-law, was a Member of Parliament for Exeter and was Recorder of Exeter (1592–1605). He was one of Prince's Worthies of Devon (1701). He built at Wembury one of the grandest manor houses ever seen in Devon, called by his near contemporary Risdon : "A magnificent house, equalling, if not exceeding, all other in these western parts, for uniform building; a sightly seat for shew; for receipt spacious; for cost sumptuous; for sight salubrious". It was already a ruin by about 1700, and was finally demolished in 1803. He founded a boys' hospital in Plymouth. His monument and effigy survives in Wembury Church.
The historic manor of Tawstock was situated in North Devon, in the hundred of Fremington, 2 miles south of Barnstaple, England. According to Pole the feudal baron of Barnstaple Henry de Tracy made Tawstock his seat, apparently having abandoned Barnstaple Castle as the chief residence of the barony. Many of the historic lords of the manor are commemorated by monuments in St Peter's Church, the parish church of Tawstock which in the opinion of Pevsner contains "the best collection in the county apart from those in the cathedral", and in the opinion of Hoskins "contains the finest collection of monuments in Devon and one of the most notable in England".
Bremridge is a historic estate within the former hundred of South Molton in Devon, England. It is now within the parish of Filleigh but was formerly in that of South Molton. It is situated 8 miles north-west of South Molton. Since the construction of the nearby A361 North Devon Link Road direct access has been cut off from Bremridge to Filleigh and South Molton. The surviving wing of the mansion house built in 1654 is a Grade II* listed building. Bremridge Wood is the site of an Iron Age enclosure or hill fort, the earthwork of which is situated on a hillside forming a promontory above the River Bray. In Bremridge Wood survives a disused tunnel of the former Great Western Railway line between South Molton and Barnstaple, much of the course of which has been used for the A361. The tunnel is 319 yards long and was identified as "Bremridge Tunnel" in the 1889 Ordnance Survey map but as "Castle Hill Tunnel" in subsequent editions.
Margaret II Audley was a co-heiress to the feudal barony of Barnstaple in Devon, England.
Sir Nicholas II Hooper (1654-1731) of Fullabrook, Braunton and Raleigh, Pilton in Devon, was a lawyer who served as Tory Member of Parliament for Barnstaple 1695-1715.
Hawkridge in the parish of Chittlehampton in North Devon, England, is an historic estate, anciently the seat of a junior branch of the Acland family which originated at nearby Acland, in the parish of Landkey and later achieved great wealth and prominence as the Acland Baronets of Killerton, near Exeter. The former mansion house is today a farmhouse known as Hawkridge Barton, a grade II* listed building. The Devon historian Hoskins (1959) stated of Hawkridge: "Externally there is nothing remarkable except a decaying avenue of ancient walnuts, so often the first indication of a 16th or 17th century mansion". The interior contains a fine plaster heraldic overmantel showing the arms of Acland impaling Tremayne, representing the 1615 marriage of Baldwin Acland (1593–1659) of Hawkridge and Elizabeth Tremayne.
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.
| Legal offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sir William de Shareshull | Chief Baron of the Exchequer 1346 | Succeeded by Sir Robert Sadington |