COLE, John I

More can be added to the earlier biography.4 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 627.

Already a landholder of some substance through his inheritance of part of the Pomeroy estates, Cole further increased his holdings by his second marriage to a wealthy widow. Daughter of a former knight of the shire, Margaret Cornu enjoyed a dower portion of the Cruwys estates in Devon from her first marriage, as well as a portion of the holdings of the former mayor of Exeter, William Wilford, who had been her second husband, and who had enjoyed a landed income of over £22 p.a.5 Ibid. iv. 867. It was probably in recognition of Cole’s standing in the wider county that the citizens of Exeter admitted him to the freedom of the city in January 1415 in return for the customary payment of £1.6 Exeter Freemen ed. Rowe and Jackson, 41. Cole regularly stood surety for the attendance in Parliament of different Devon Members, on occasion even for MPs from more than one borough. Likewise, he is periodically found empanelled on local juries in his native county.7 KB9/205/3/2, 17.

The death of Sir Thomas Pomeroy†, husband of Cole’s niece Joan Pomeroy, in 1426 caused the simmering dispute over the valuable Pomeroy inheritance to flare up once again. This had its origins in an entail of the family lands in the male line made in 1329 and roundly ignored by Cole’s uncle, Sir John Pomeroy†, who in 1387 settled his property on his heirs general in the event that he should die childless. Although Sir John had subsequently changed his mind and in 1404 and 1414 had recognized the claim of his cousin and heir-male, Edward Pomeroy† of Sandridge, at his death in 1416 the heirs general, Cole and John Pomeroy, had secured the inheritance. The death of the forceful Sir Thomas, who some years earlier had driven his cousin Edward Pomeroy from the manor of Tregony by an act of naked violence, seems to have emboldened the latter to renew his quest for his inheritance. By the spring of 1428 he was in possession of the family seat of Berry Pomeroy, but on 17 Apr. Cole, clearly taking a leaf out of Sir Thomas’s book, assembled a band of Brixham sailors and other rough working men, and reached the manor-house just before dinner time. They forced their way in, manhandled Edward and his wife, and threw her out half dressed. They then rampaged through the house, discovered the couple’s five sons and two daughters in bed, and evicted them from the house naked. A worse fate awaited two female servants who were unceremoniously flung out of the windows, before the rioters set about consuming what food and drink they could find in the house. It took the intervention of three local gentlemen, John Ash I*, John Prideaux of Adeston and Richard Piperell, and the threat of the imminent arrival of the j.p.s, to persuade the rioters to give up their ill-gotten gains. When the matter eventually came to trial, Cole’s men admitted to the offence, but pleaded their master’s lawful title to the manor. As to the violence, they admitted laying hands on the family, but claimed to have peacefully asked the Pomeroys to leave, and only upon their refusal to have taken them by the hands and arms and to have ‘pacifice et honeste’ expelled them from the house. Two servants, they admitted, had been standing by the mansion’s windows ‘near the ground’, and had been pushed out ‘with their hands, and without other violence, as well they might do’.8 KB9/223/38; KB27/670, rex rot. 19.

Cole’s daughter Joan married James, the son and heir of Stephen Durneford (d.1427), by his wife Radegunde, who afterwards married James Chudleigh* of Ashton. It may have been in connexion with Joan’s dowry that shortly before his death Durneford sued Cole for a debt of £20.9 C139/34/42; CP40/660, rot. 87d.

The date of Cole’s death cannot be established with absolute certainty, but he was presumably still alive in 1430, when he was distrained for his failure to take up knighthood, but had died before 8 Sept. 1432, when his widow, Margery, presented to the church of Pilsdon, Dorset, of which her late husband had previously been patron in her right.10 Hutchins, ii. 228-9, 232, 236.