TANKRET, Richard

The origins of the Tankret family of Devon are uncertain, but they may have given their name to the settlement in the vicinity of Tavistock known by the later fourteenth century as ‘Tankardysham’.1 Tavistock Parish Recs. ed. Worth, 4. Certainly, the family was established in the Devon town by 1339, when Robert Tankret† (or Tankard) represented the borough in the Commons, while in the 1340s a William Tankret was witnessing local property deeds alongside the portreeve.2 Ibid. 68-69. In 1419, Walter Tankret, possibly Richard’s father, acquired holdings in the town in the right of his wife Margaret, one of the three daughters and eventual coheiresses of William Giles (holdings which subsequently became the subject of an acrimonious dispute between the sisters and their husbands).3 CP25(1)/45/78/81; CP40/703, rot. 427. The extent of Richard’s own property has not been discovered, but by 1468 he leased a tenement with a garden in Tavistock from John Wyndesore, and by the same date he appears to have laid claim to land at Hurdwick (where Walter and Margaret had held property), over which he was squabbling with his neighbour John Fitz*. Fitz accused him of having killed four of his pigs, and of wrongfully pasturing livestock in his close.4 Tavistock Parish Recs. 78-79; CP40/826, rot. 255d. Unlike one of his kinsmen, John Tankret, who traded as a mercer at Tavistock, Richard was described as a gentleman.

Little else is known of the MP, who does not appear to have distinguished himself in the Commons. In 1454 and 1457 he is found serving on local juries at Exeter, and he is last recorded as a feoffe of property in Tavistock in 1469.5 JUST1/199/13, mm. 2, 3; C139/163/5, 10; 166/28; Tavistock Parish Recs. 79. He does not appear to have held office locally, but a younger kinsman, William Tankret, served as mayor of Tavistock in 1495-6.6 Cornw. RO, Coode and French (Sawle) mss, CF2/215/80/1; Trans. Devon Assoc. lxxix. 151.