Robert Pinsent: 1579 – 1631 DRO0043 (Rector of Cotleigh, Devon)
Wilmot Unknown: xxxx – 1638
Married: xxxx: xxxx, xxxx
Children by Wilmot Unknown:
William Pinsent: xxxx – 1658
Family Branch: Combe
PinsentID: DRO0043
The Reverend Robert Pinsent of Cotleigh was, most likely, the eldest surviving son of George Pinsent, a wealthy “yeoman” merchant in Exminster, by his wife Julianna Bonfessor. If so, he was baptized in Bovey Tracey in 1570. Julianna died in 1591, and George married Mary (unknown) shortly afterwards and they had two children; so Robert likely grew up with at least one brother, George, and two sisters, Elizabeth and Anne, from his own family and two step siblings, Judith and John, who were from his father’s second marriage.
Robert’s father sent him to Oxford University, where he matriculated at St. Mary’s Hall in November 1598 (Alumni Oxonienses Vol. 4). This was – incidentally – the year his father died. His father’s “Last Will and Testament,” which has been discussed elsewhere, shows that George was a reasonably rich man who, after dealing with the rest of his family and making other bequests, left Robert (who was at that point still a minor) as his executor and principal legatee.
Robert was ordained a priest in Exeter Cathedral in July 1599 and was appointed Rector of Nymet Rowland, a small parish in central Devon in 1606. The Diocese of Exeter Clerical Tenure Records (CCED, on-line) state that a “William Pinsent” was appointed to that position, that is clearly wrong (as shown below). Rev. Robert Pinsent was appointed Rector of Cotleigh, in Devon (a larger parish near the Dorset County border) in November 1609 and held the position until he died in 1631 (CCED Diocese of Exeter Clerical Tenure).
I do not know if Cotleigh was a particularly troublesome parish before the Rev. Robert Pinsent arrived; however, it quickly became one after his arrival. Henry Sherren brought complaints against the rector in the Court of Star Chamber in 1613 (STAC8-266-29) and in 1618 (STAC8-261-17), and he and other paritioners were involved in considerable litigation with their minister in the lower courts in the intervening years. Henry claimed that Robert was a troublesome man who enriched himself and his cronies at the expense of his parishioners. In a deposition he made for the second case, he explained that Robert had a particular dislike of him and his wife Alice: “So it is, if it may please your most Excellent Majesty, that the said Pinsent and Tomson practicing, combining and confederating together how to enrich themselves, have most unlawfully and corruptly over the space of five or six years last past made it their usual and ordinary practice to vex and molest your Majesty’s loving subjects, their neighbours and parishioners, with multitudes of causeless suits framing and inventing matter of accusation upon their own heads and imaginations against divers of your Majesty’s subjects … … “.
Mr. Sherren claimed that Robert fabricated cases against his parishioners and then either pressed the suits against them in the Consistory Court in Exeter or in the Court of High Commission in London – or else threatened to do so, and demand they compound (reach a deal) with him if they wished him to drop the case. It was a classic shake-down.
According to Henry, the harassment, started soon after the Reverend Robert arrived in the parish, and he said that he was not always alone in bullying parishioners. He sometimes teamed up in doing so with the Rev. Thomas Tomson, the priest in the neighbouring parish of Broadhembury – a man that Henry considered to be of little learning. These disputes are generally poorly documented as they were settled in the Ecclesiastical Courts and the records are not generally available; however, the two that Mr. Sherren brought to the Court of Star Chamber – one of the highest courts in the land are and they tell the tale.
The less serious cases triggered inter-personal squabbles and disputes in and among the parishioners and, Henry Sherren in his deposition for his first case (STAC8-255-29: Sherren v. Pinsent) claimed that several of his neighbours, led by a previous tenant of a field known as the “North Close,” broke in and stole his corn, and let in “several beasts” to wander about and to do further damage. He also says that when his wife tried to take the livestock to the pound, she was abused by on-lookers.
Mr. Sherren also said that several of his neighbours (including Rev. Robert Pinsent) persuaded a Justice of the Peace to issue a “Warrant of Good Behaviour” against him in November 1612, doubtless hoping to trigger a reaction and have him arrested and imprisoned for, among other things, debts he had. However, they needed to serve the warrant. Evidently, it was agreed that one of the conspirators would accuse him of stealing a lamb and another of him stealing capons and hens. Sometime later, a mob “to the number of forty persons, being armed as aforesaid, repaired to your subject’s house in the month of November last, about midnight beating at your subject’s doors and offering to break them open, to the great terror and amazement of the neighbouring inhabitants and of your subject’s poor wife and children, who being affrighted therewith cried out with … affirming that your said subject was not in the said house, whereupon they departed, after they had continued there the space of two hours.” This mob was, he said, under the direction of the Rev. Robert Pinsent.
Henry Sherren asked the Court to issue subpoenas requiring the rector and more than twenty accomplices to appear in court and explain themselves. Unfortunately, only one of their depositions remains. That of Tristram Pigeon, who said that the parish tythingman had told him that he had a valid warrant to enforce, and he had agreed to go along and assist him in serving it.
Henry discussed this event and others in a deposition he made in 1618 (STAC8-261-17: Sherren v. Pinsent and Others). Another example of the sort of harassment he said he received was when Ellis Randall (a man who worked for the rector) and other parishioners who knew he was going up to London in October to 1611 to testify in some dispute or other, attempted to prevent him from leaving. They accused him of having stolen the horse he had borrowed and threatened to send “hue and cry” after him. On that occasion, they failed to stop him, so sometime later they arranged for the Thorne family to force a confrontation with him that could be used as a pretext for a case in the Court of Common Pleas. He went on to describe how William Thorne had contrived to bring about an action for battery against him at the Devon Assizes.
Henry said he found that William and his family were breaking ground on his land and: “… the said Thornes, then and there digging, breaking up and carrying way the earth and ground there only of purpose to pick a quarrel with your subject by doing him this open wrong, they being all armed with long staves, pitch forks and other dangerous weapons, the one of them having a knife drawn in his hand and the rest taking up great stones did hurl and cast them at your subject most violently of purpose and with full intent to wound lame or maim your subject, or do him some deadly mischief; …” Henry insisted that they instigated the fracas, and that when the case came to trial, Rev. Robert Pinsent and William Thorne suborned witnesses to find against him – and arranged for one of his enemies to be the foreman of the jury! Thorne said it was manor land and he had every right to be there.
According to Henry, the same confederates also sought a warrant for his arrest out of the Court of Star Chamber, saying that he had physically assaulted and beaten William Thorne’s daughter, Mary. They claimed: “that your subject had beaten the said Mary Thorne his daughter so grievously as at that very time she, the said Mary, lay at the point of death. In and by which said oath and deposition so made by him, the said William Thorne, the said Thorne hath committed most wicked and willful and corrupt perjury, and the said Robert Pinsent and the said other confederates most wicked, willfully and corrupt subornation and perjury, for your subject saith, and will aver and prove, that your subject did not at all beat or strike the said Mary Thorne, neither did the said Mary at that time lie at the point of death … .” He accused her of dancing at the Reverend’s house!
Henry was, clearly, not a particular fan of the Rector (or Mr. Thorne, for that matter) and he went on to explain that he, Henry, and others, presented articles to the High Court of Commission in 1616, charging him with the offence of simony (the purchase of his living); however, the case came to nothing as the Reverend Robert bribed and terrified Henry’s witnesses and bullied them into equivocating and/or outright lying.
Henry went on to explain that the Reverend Robert was addicted to “… excessive drinking and frequenting loud company and disordered and infamous houses, unlawful games profaning the Sabbath, common swearing, equivocation, fornication, adultery, simony and diverse other most notorious and horrible vices, to the great contempt and scandal of his ministry and the ill example of all other your Majesty’s true and loyal subjects dwelling in these parts; for your subject saith that the said Pinsent (having sold his benefice or parsonage of Nymet Rowland in your Majesty’s said County of Devon for one hundred and twenty pounds or thereabout) obtained the benefice of the said parish of Cotleigh within your Majesty’s county of Devon by simony or other unlawful means of or from one William Collins of Offwell in the said County of Devon, patron of your said parish church.”
Henry Sherren’s second attempt to prosecute the rector in the Court of Star Chamber likely failed. Although the Reverend Robert Pinsent’s reply is missing, he would have denied Sherren’s charges, especially the most serious one, that of simony. Those co-defendants who did testify felt that the charges were malicious and some of them said that the issues raised had already been adjudicated in other courts and, as such, they tactfully asked if they were legally obliged to respond to the Court’s questions. A few did respond, but they provided no significant insight into the issues raised. – As to the accusation of simony – it was an ecclesiastical matter and not subject to the the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber Court! Reverend Robert remained in his living.
When Henry Preston, Esq. of Uppoterie died in 1624, he made the usual covenants to God and the Church and left most of his estate to his son Roger; however, he directed that part was of it was to be held “in tale male” for 80 year, if he (Roger) should live so long, with remainer to his sons Henry and William “if he, William, stand “rectus in curia” at time of my death. If my son does not stand “rectus in curia” I devise the premises to Robt. Pinsent, clerk, for life of William Preston, remainder to my rt. heirs.” Presumably William Preston had had some legal problems that needed to be resolved. If he was “rectus in curia” he was considered free from any charge of impeachment (Merriam-Webster). Robert witnessed the will and agreed to supervise Mr. Preston’s wife and daughter, who were the joint executrixes of the will (Moger Abstracts of Devon Wills).
Robert died in 1631 and his wife, Wilmot, proved his will. Unfortunately, it is now missing; however, when Olive Moger made her review of the Exeter Diocesan Records, she noted: “#1070: Wilmot Pynsent, relict of administratrix of Robert Pynsent, clerk, rector of Cotleigh: Invent. £199 18s: Debts to … Chichester, gent. of Widworthy, Matthew Callard, gent. of Stockland, Nicholas Woodyeates of Monckton, Robert Salter of Plymtree. William Pynsent, his son £28 and £12 more to said William when accounts do pay. 1632” This is the only catagorical evidence I have so far found that Robert and his wife having had a son.
In 1639, Wilmot was named as one of several defendants in a cause brought before the Court of Chancery relating to the disposition of a major local land-owner, Robert Heydon’s, estate at the time of a family marriage – which required a settlement – and at his death. It refers to a cottage in Gifford that was held by Robert until his death and then by Wilmot (C78/384/16).
Wilmot had probably recently died. E. A. Fry’s listing of the Wills and Administrations filed in Exeter before the Probate Registry was bombed in World War II mentions the Administration of Reverend Robert Pinsent of Cotleigh in 1631, and an Inventory made for Wilmot Pinsent of Clyst St. Lawrence in 1638.
Robert’s son William’s birth and marriage records are missing. However, he is probably the man who married Joan unknown and had children baptized and buried in Cotleigh in the early 1650s. Their first child, Joan was born in 1654 but died the following year. The second, Amos, was born in 1656 and died leaving a subsequently destroyed will in 1684. I do not know if he ever married. William’s third child, Margaret, arrived a few days after he died, in February 1658. When her husband died Joan was left with at least two young children to look after. She probably married William Luckis in Cotleigh in 1664. However, I need a bit more documentation!
Family Tree
Grandparents
Grandfather: John Pinsent: xxxx – 1575
Grandmother: Johanna Unknown: xxxx – 1570
Parents
Father: George Pinsent: xxxx – 1598
Mother: Julianna Bonfessor: xxxx – 1591
Father’s Siblings (Aunts, Uncles)
John Pynsent: 1532 – 1615
George Pinsent: xxxx – 1598
Thomas Pinsent: xxxx – xxxx
Elizabeth Pinsent: xxxx – xxxx
Hugh Pinsent: 1540 – 1626
Margaret Pinsent: 1542 – xxxx
Walter Pinsent: 1544 – xxxx
Mary Pinsent: 1546 – xxxx
Johanna Pinsent: 1549 – xxxx
Male Siblings (Brothers, Step-Brothers)
Richard Pinsent: 1571 – 1571
Gilbert Pinsent: 1577 – xxxx
Robert Pinsent: 1579 – 1631
George Pinsent: 1586 – 1632
John Pinsent: 1594 – 1654
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