Richard Duket

[2] Despite his eminence, the jurist Bracton thought poorly of him as a judge, calling him an "unwise and unlearned" man who had never made a proper study of the laws of England, and was forced to rely on help in writing his judgments on the assistance of more learned colleagues.

[4] He was referred to by King John as "my Secretary" (clericus noster) in 1203, and received a pension of 5 marks a year from the revenues of the Abbey of Whitby, which was then in royal hands, for his services.

[2] In 1224 he and Simon de Hale were appointed itinerant justices:[2] their judicial district eventually covered most of the counties of south-eastern England.

[1] Despite his seniority, the great jurist Henry de Bracton, who probably knew Duket personally (their judicial careers may have slightly overlapped), thought very poorly of him as a judge.

[2] Duket also had several important extra-judicial functions, acting as a general adviser to the Justiciar of Ireland, Richard Mór de Burgh, and dealing with a wide variety of business on his behalf, including routine matters like the marriage of John le Poer, son and heir of Robert le Poer, a Royal ward.

It is likely that he was one of the senior officials who advised on how to levy the highly successful ecclesiastical "aid", a tax of one-sixteenth on the value of clerical benefices, which enabled de Burgh to send the remarkable sum of 2000 marks to King Henry in 1230.

One branch of the family settled at Grayrigg in Cumbria late in the fourteenth century, having inherited through marriage some of the estates of the leading statesman Sir William de Windsor (died 1384).