COLCLOUGH, Thomas

Colclough was head of the leading family of Newcastle-under-Lyme. His great-grandfather, Richard Colclough†, had represented the borough in Parliament as early as 1360, and the family thereafter maintained a tradition of parliamentary service. But although our MP was undoubtedly a prominent figure in his native borough, the loss of the borough’s records means that what little can be gleaned of his career comes from the records of central government, principally those of the common-law courts. These show that he inherited the family property while yet a minor: in 1431 the prior of All Saints, Trentham, sued his mother for abducting him from his wardship. By 1442, and perhaps several years before, he was of age, for by then he had made a lease of a messuage and some 50 acres of land in Blurton, near Newcastle-under-Lyme.1 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xvii. 131, 160. None the less, he was still a relatively young man when elected to represent his native borough in the consecutive Parliaments of 1450 and 1453. On the first occasion, he also attested the shire election, an indication of his modest landholdings in the county.2 C219/16/1, 2.

Soon after the end of his second Parliament, Colclough was involved in fresh legal difficulties. In Michaelmas term 1454 Richard Bagot sued him and two of his kinsmen, Richard and Roger Colclough, for debts of £40 each. More seriously, in the same term he was appealed by a widow as one of the principals in the murder of her husband, William Heywode. Many of the 68 appealed, the principal of whom was the Cheshire esquire, John Damport of Damport, were tradesmen from Leek and Congleton, both in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, but there is no evidence to give a context to the alleged murder. As was routinely the case with such appeals, the appealed appear to have suffered no adverse legal consequences.3 CP40/775, rot. 396; KB27/774, rot. 15. Later, however, Colclough did suffer at law on a much less serious matter. On 6 Dec. 1463 he was outlawed in the city of Coventry at the suit of Sir William Birmingham for a debt of four marks. In the following Easter term he appeared personally in the court of common pleas to plead the invalidity of the process against him, and was put to the inconvenience of several further appearances in court. The matter was still pending late in 1466, and he may have died before its resolution. He last appears in the records in 1467, as an attestor to the parliamentary election in his home town.4 CP40/802, rots. 147, 150; 812, rot. 128; C219/17/1. It is probable that his namesake who, described as ‘of Newcastle-under-Lyme, junior, gentleman’, offered surety for him in 1464 in the outlawry action, was his son; as may also have been Richard Colclough, who was mayor of Newcastle in 1469-70.5 CP40/812, rot. 128; Sheffield Archs., Copley mss, SY570/Z/3/2.

The Tudor antiquary, John Leland, in his list of Staffordshire gentry, refers to ‘Coleclough of Bloerton’, who had lands worth £10 p.a. The family had a distinguished later history, settling at Tintern in Ireland in the reign of Henry VIII.6 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, ii. 172; The Commons 1660-90, i. 104.