KELE, Richard (d.c.1411), of Wycombe, Bucks.

Kele is first mentioned in Wycombe in 1372, when he witnessed a grant to William atte Dene. William Clerk II was his surety for attendance when he was elected to Parliament for the fourth time, in 1385. In the following year he bought a house in the borough, and in 1390 he is recorded as also owning property in Crendon Lane. Kele served two consecutive terms as mayor, and during the second of these, in March 1393, he was appointed for the fifth time as tax collector in the county at large. Shortly afterwards, he was ordered, no doubt in his official capacity, to arrest five men in the Wycombe area, and to take them before the royal council. In 1396 he appeared as a pledge for a fellow townsman in the manor court at Bassetsbury.3HMC 5th Rep. 562; C219/8/12; First Ledger Bk. High Wycombe (Bucks. Rec. Soc. xi), 39-40; CP25(1)21/106/4; St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs. XV/15/1 mm. 1-2. It must have been at about this time, too, that Kele, along with several other burgesses, became a feoffee of Thomas atte Lude for a large estate in and near Wycombe. Towards the end of his life he had agricultural interests, for he held a large area of pasture in Bassetsbury manor in 1410. He was dead by October 1412.4DL29/652/10554; JUST 1/1/79/5.