LEDYCOTE, William

Like many of his fellow Barnstaple MPs, Ledycote seems to have been a man of greater substance and importance in his own day and locality than the scant traces his career has left in the records suggest: indeed, the return of his sole recorded election to Parliament styles him an esquire.1 C219/16/2. It is not certain whether William himself was a newcomer to the north Devon port, or whether a previous generation of his family had moved there from Herefordshire, but that they originated from the Welsh marches seems clear from the connexions which he continued to maintain in the principality.

Ledycote is first heard of in October 1443 when he was among the Barnstaple burgesses who inspected and certified the accuracy of a settlement of the boundary between the parishes of Barnstaple and of Pilton made by the archdeacon of Barnstaple some nine years earlier.2 C147/150. No details of his occupation have been discovered, but he evidently had interests in shipping, for at some point during the 1440s one William Nerbere, a Welshman from St. Athan in Glamorgan, complained to the chancellor, Archbishop Stafford, that he had been deprived of his partial ownership of a balinger called the Mary by his business partner, John Beare*, who had instead gone into business with Ledycote.3 W. Country Shipping (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. xxi), 58.