COLLE, John

The Colles had long been one of the most important Shrewsbury families, tracing their descent back to Hugh Colle, bailiff there in the reign of Edward I. His son and grandson, both named Thomas†, represented the borough in Parliament on five occasions between 1329 and 1341.4 Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 125; Wealth of Shrewsbury ed. D. and R. Cromarty, 55-56, 92-93, 105, 112, 120. Rather surprisingly, it was not until the career of our MP that a Colle is once more known to have sat for the borough. Unfortunately, he poses irresolvable difficulties of precise identification. At least three John Colles played a prominent part in the borough’s affairs in the first three-quarters of the fifteenth century. Their dates of death are unknown and their careers overlapped. Indeed, it can be no more than a speculation, albeit a very probable one, that they came from three successive generations. On balance, it seems that the MP, described as ‘junior’ when returned to the Parliament of 1429, was the middle of the three Johns, and it is this assumption that has been followed here.5 C219/14/1.

When elected to Parliament, Colle was heir to one of the largest inheritances in Shrewsbury. His putative father had been a royal tax collector in the town in 1410, and twice held elected office in the borough, as one of the assessors in 1411-12 and as coroner in 1420-1. In 1431 he was assessed holding lands in burgage worth just over £6 p.a., the second highest assessment among the townsmen.6 CFR, xiii. 183; Shrewsbury assembly bk. 3365/67, ff. 12v, 14; Feudal Aids, iv. 260. These expectations explain why our MP was able to take a part in borough affairs before his father’s death. Not only was he elected to Parliament but, in the autumn of 1437, he was one of the 25 jurors responsible for electing the Shrewsbury borough officers. Much more difficult to explain is his election, at some date before February 1438, as one of the coroners of Shropshire. On that date a writ was issued to the county sheriff for the election of three new coroners, one of whom was to replace John Colle ‘the younger’, described, in the conventional language of such writs, as ‘too much busied elsewhere’ to discharge the office.7 Assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 17; CCR, 1435-41, p. 147. Whether he was replaced is not known (such writs were often ineffective) but the fact that he served as one of the county coroners implies that he held property outside Shrewsbury, although this is largely undocumented.

Beyond this, all is uncertainty. It is not known when the MP’s father died or when the career of his own putative son began. The best guess, however, is that one of the last acts of the MP’s career was a dispute in the late 1440s with a Staffordshire yeoman, Richard Dunne, over property at Child’s Ercall, some ten miles to the north-east of Shrewsbury. How this had come to him is not known. According to an action of trespass sued by the John Colles, senior and junior (probably the MP and his son), Dunne had broken their closes there on 2 Nov. 1447 and taken livestock worth £20. In reply, Dunne sued the Colles for conspiring to have him indicted before the Shropshire j.p.s., a charge which found favour with a Staffordshire presenting jury but not with a trial one.8 KB27/753, rot. 56; 758, rot. 44d; 765, rot. 68; KB9/271/100. The MP was certainly alive as late as Trinity term 1452 when he and the younger John personally appeared in King’s bench to pursue their action of trespass against Dunne, but by then his place in local affairs had already been taken by the younger man, who was, there is no reason to doubt, his son. As early as the spring of 1450 this John, as our MP before him, had been elected as one of the county coroners, and thereafter he held a string of offices. He was coroner of the borough in 1452-3, and at the end of his term he was elected as bailiff.9 C242/11/13; assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 19. He went on to enjoy a much more significant career than that of the MP. By the autumn of 1455 he was serving as lieutenant of Shrewsbury castle, and from the early 1460s he was, not surprisingly, one of the town’s alderman.10 C67/41, m. 30; assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 68v. In 1465 he was wealthy enough to be distrained to take up the rank of knighthood. Although he is not recorded as representing the borough in Parliament, he attested four Shropshire parliamentary elections between 1450 and 1478, and he was bailiff of Shrewsbury in 1466-7 and 1475-6 as well as 1453-4.11 E159/242, recorda Trin. rot. 23d; C219/16/1, 3; 17/2, 3; assembly bk. 3365/67, ff. 22, 24v.

The family failed in the legitimate male line in the mid sixteenth century on the death of this John’s grandson, Edmund Colle†, MP for Shrewsbury in 1523, but continued, through Edmund’s illegitimate son, Robert, to be a prominent Shrewsbury family into the seventeenth century.12 The Commons 1509-58, i. 672; Vis. Salop, 126-7.