Manor of Combe Martin

Brictric et Edwi libere tenebant tempore Edwardi Regis et geldabat pro 2 hidae et una virgata terrae.

Brictric and Edwy held it freely and jointly in the time of King Edward the Confessor and it paid tax for 2 hides and 1 virgate of land.

The Exeter Domesday Book lists him as holding the following seventeen Devon manors as a tenant-in-chief of the king:[2] He married Geva de Burci, as her second husband, the daughter and sole heiress of Serlo de Burcy, feudal baron of Blagdon, Somerset, which barony is sometimes stated to be of Dartington, Devon, as the caput cannot be clearly assigned exclusively to either place.

[3] Geva's first husband was "Martin" (d.pre-1086) for whom she produced a son and heir Robert FitzMartin (d. 1159) who with his descendants were feudal barons of Blagdon.

The Devon lands of William de Falaise passed to the FitzMartin family, feudal barons of Blagdon, from whom derives the 'Martin' suffix on the place name, who were sometimes seated at his former manor of Dartington [citation needed].

James Audley thus in 1342 inherited his childless aunt Eleanor's moiety of the barony of Barnstaple, giving him possession of the whole, including the constituent manor of Combe Martin.

Grant of the manor and borough of Combmeston, Devon, with reservation of gold and silver mines, &c. Hampton Court, 20 Oct. 29 Hen.

[9] He was the 2nd son of Sir Lewis Pollard (c.1465-1526) of King's Nympton, Justice of the Common Pleas from 1514 to 1526[10] and MP for Totnes in 1491.

[11] There exists in Combe Martin Church a monumental brass inscribed in Latin as follows: "Guilielm(us) Hancock generos(us) hui(us) paroeciae quo(n)da(m) incola in fide Christiana firm(a) certaq(ue) spe fret(us) vitae in coelis perpetuo duraturae migravit ex hac vita quarto die Februarii Anno Domini 1587.o cuius corpus sepultum est decimo nono mensis eiusdem relictis superstitibus tribus filiabus unoq(ue) filio" ("William Hancock, gentleman, once an inhabitant of this parish, in firm Christian faith and certain hope confiding in eternal life in perpetual Heaven departed from this life on the 4th day of February in the year of Our Lord the 1587th, of whom the body was buried on the 19th of the same month, with survivors remaining three daughters and one son").

William Hancock (d.1587) appears to have been born into a family already in the ranks of the gentry as is revealed by the presence of one quartering on the escutcheon in his monumental brass, denoting the existence of one heraldic heiress in his ancestry.

She was a Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth I and has a sumptuous monument to her memory in the Lady Chapel of Exeter Cathedral, next to that of Dodderidge.

[19] At or before her 17th birthday she and the 23-year-old William were married and had two children: At the time of her 1st husband's death in 1625 Sir John Dodderidge and his wife Anne Culme were then still living and presumably had some part in the care of the now fatherless infant.

[20] Philipa, The widow of Thomas I Ivatt, of unknown family, was a lunatic, and her wardship was sold by the king in 1629 to the poet Aurelian Townsend (d.1643)[21] They had the following progeny: Judith's second husband Thomas II Ivatt erected a monument with a bust in white marble of his wife in Combe Martin church, positioned on the north wall of the north aisle chapel above the vestry door.

(Sacred to the memory of Love) Here lyeth the body of Judith first the wyfe of William Hancock Lord of this mannor by whome she had issue John & Ann, after the wyfe of Thomas Ivatt Es(q) some tymes His Ma(jes)t's printcipail sercher in the Port of London at whose cost this monument was erected.