COLECOTE, Richard, of Devon.

Richard was probably a descendant of John Colecote, three times mayor of Barnstaple, and MP for the borough in 1320, 1334 and 1335. Other members of his family exported cloth from Barnstaple in Richard II’s reign.J.B. Gribble, Mems. Barnstaple, 198; E122/40/14, 23. In July 1396, at the assizes held at Exeter castle, a jury indicted Colecote, described as ‘a common attorney in the court for diverse men’, of contempt of court and a breach of the peace, after he had struck another attorney, Hugh Sampford, with his right hand. He was committed to prison at Exeter. However, his career would seem not to have been seriously impaired: in June 1399 he appeared in Chancery as surety under a pain of 100 marks for another offender against the King’s peace, and in 1411 he was given the brief for the defence in a local suit for trespass. Nothing more is known of him for sure.JUST 1/1502 m. 150d; CCR, 1396-9, p. 493; 1409-13, p. 217. He was possibly the Richard Colecote who, in 1427, was sharing possession of a knight’s fee in Halwell, Devon, with John Trebell* and others (Feudal Aids, i. 460).