COHEW, Nicholas

Unusually for a south-western borough Member of the Parliament of 1447, Cohew was a local merchant resident in the town he represented. He had been admitted to the merchant guild of Totnes by December 1444, when he stood surety in the mayor’s court for the admission to the guild of Stephen Lome.2 Ibid. 384. Although no details of their property are known, Nicholas and his family ranked among the more substantial burgesses of the town, and were regularly assessed at the rate of 4d., the highest paid ‘within the gates’ for the annual levy.3 Ibid. 386, 398, 405, 414. A better indication of his means is provided by his contributions to parliamentary subsidies in the later 1440s. Usually, he paid 32d. for every full tenth and fifteenth granted by Parliament, while the highest rate paid by anyone in Totnes was 40d.4 Ibid. 391, 403, 416. Although Cohew is not known to have held local office prior to his return, he thus nevertheless had a personal interest in the decisions Parliament might take, and in 1447 was probably elected purely on the strength of his local standing. At the time, the collection of much of the taxation granted by the previous year’s Parliament was still outstanding, and like many of his fellow Members Cohew may have returned home after the session of barely three weeks with a sense of relief at not having been asked for any additional financial concessions.

It appears that his fellow burgesses considered his performance in the Commons satisfactory, for over the course of the next few years he began to play his part in public life. In October 1449 he was chosen to assess the contributions of the townspeople to the taxes granted by Parliament earlier that year; in subsequent months he was regularly among the townsmen empanelled on local juries; he is found attesting his neighbours’ property deeds; and in 1450 he was entrusted with the more important office of warden of the bridge of Totnes.5 Ibid. 395, 406, 418, 422, 425; Devon RO, Totnes bor. recs., deeds 136M/T/17. Around this time, the energies of many of the leading townsmen were increasingly absorbed by an ambitious plan to build a new belfry for the parish church of St. Mary. The church itself had been rebuilt in the 1430s and in July 1442 the bishop of Exeter’s suffragan had consecrated four bells. In 1444 the timber of the old belfry was ordered to be sold, but, whether for lack of money or other reasons, thereafter progress slowed down, and it was not until 1449 that the foundations for the belfry were laid and the porch of the church taken down. Men of experience in financial matters were urgently needed to oversee the project and to raise the necessary funds, and in January 1450 Cohew was appointed one of initially four, and later six, overseers of the building. He thus embarked on a task which was to occupy him for the rest of his life. The overseers’ duties were extremely varied, including both technical and fiscal activities. It was their responsibility to arrange for the parishioners to take turns in digging for stones in the quarry, before these stones could be brought by barge as far as Totnes bridge, where they were left in the water. In order to avoid their erosion, the overseers had to ensure that they did not remain there for more than a week before being removed to the churchyard. These practical tasks aside, the overseers also travelled around the region, to Callington in Cornwall, as well as to Buckland Brewer, Tavistock and Ashburton, to inspect the belfries there and to choose the most attractive design to be copied at Totnes. In the event, the model chosen was the belfry at Ashburton. Perhaps not surprisingly, by early 1452 this ambitious undertaking had once more run into financial difficulties and the mayor and the overseers were authorized to levy funds for the building throughout the parish on Sundays and were also instructed to go from house to house to see how much everybody would voluntarily contribute – a task for which the knowledge of his neighbours’ affairs that Cohew had gained as a tax assessor stood him in good stead.6 Watkin, i. 364, 380, 383, 407, 421, 425; ii. 954-5, 956, 957; N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Devon, 868.

As no court rolls of Totnes survive between 1452 and 1465 it is not known when the belfry, which survives to the present day, was completed or whether Cohew lived to see it finished. He apparently died at some point before the latter date, for there is no further mention of him in the records.7 Watkin, ii. 958; Pevsner, 868.