COLDALE (COWDALE), John (by 1495-1534 or later), of Carlisle, Cumb.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1495, s. of Richard Coldale of Carlisle. m. Elizabeth, da. and coh. of Roger Bertram of Bothal, Northumb., at least 1s. 1da.1

Offices Held

Biography

The Coldale family was established in Carlisle before the middle of the 15th century. John Coldale first appears in a civic context when in June 1516 6 he was one of a number of local men, headed by Thomas, 2nd Lord Dacre of Gilsland, and including Edward Aglionby I, his future fellow-Member, and Robert Coldale, who commissioned the rebuilding of the bridge over the river Eden. About ten years later he was a feoffee with Dacre. Such contacts, which may simply mean that Coldale had learned to live with these powerful neighbours, throw no light on the patronage which procured his election in 1529, and much the same is true of Edward Aglionby. Not until 1534 is Coldale revealed as one willing to see the Dacres destroyed: he signed the inventory of the 3rd Lord Dacre’s goods after the arrests in May and was a member of the jury, a body packed with kinsmen and followers of rival chieftains, which found a true bill against Dacre on 15 June. Although not easily assigned to any faction—he may have had no continuing interest in the village whose name he bore and where there was Percy property—Coldale was by then no friend to the Dacres, if he had ever been.2

Unlike Aglionby, Coldale is not known to have held office either under the crown or in the city of Carlisle: indeed, the difficulty of tracing him after 1534 prompts the question whether he did not meet an early death. That this had taken place before 6 July 1551 is known from his widow Elizabeth’s settlement on that date of all her lands in Benwell, Brenkley and Capheaton, Northumberland, on her son Richard, but it may have occurred several years earlier; thus there is no mention of him in an action over her inheritance to which Elizabeth Coldale was party in 1544. His son Richard died in December 1562 leaving an infant daughter Eleanor, who was to marry Robert Brisco, a Dacre tenant; there had been an earlier marriage between the two families when Coldale’s daughter Barbara married this Robert Brisco’s uncle and namesake.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Authors: L. M. Kirk / Alan Davidson

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xl. bet. pp. 48-49; J. Denton, Cumb. Estates and Fams. (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq and Arch. Soc. Tract Ser. ii), 101n; Arch. Aeliana (ser. 4), vii. 70n.
  • 2. R. Charters of Carlisle (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. extra ser. x), 112-14; xxviii. 204; Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xl. 49; HMC Le Fleming, 6; LP Hen. VIII, vii; M. E. James, Change and Continuity in Tudor North (Borthwick Pprs. xxvii), 18; CPR, 1557-8, p. 188.
  • 3. Arch. Aeliana (ser. 3), vi. 87; (ser. 4), vii. 68, 70; Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xl. 48-49, 54-55; Vis. Cumb. (Harl. Soc. vii), 12; Northumb. County Hist. xii. 523; xiii. 219.