Richard de Southchurch

Sir Richard de Southchurch (Suthchirche, Suthcherch) (died 1294) was a knight and part of the landowning aristocracy of Essex in the thirteenth century.

Southchurch has earned a special place in the historiography of the period due to an episode during the war where he allegedly planned to attack London with incendiary cocks.

[7] It was in this situation that Southchurch, in his capacity as sheriff, levied requisitions on Chafford Hundred of; ...oats and wheat, of bacon, beef, cheese and pease, 'pur sustenir le ost au Rey'; of chickens to feed the wounded and tow and eggs to make dressings for their wounds and linen for bandages, of chord to make ropes for the catapults, of picks and calthrops and spades to lay low the walls of London, and finally of cocks, forty and more, to whose feet he declared he would tie fire, and send them flying into London to burn it down.

It was, however, in a paper published in the English Historical Review as early as 1916 that she gave the most detailed account of Southchurch's plot.

[12] Yet even though both Cam and Powicke had included the tale as a humorous anecdote, it was not until Michael Prestwich wrote his monograph of Edward I in 1988 that anyone considered the possibility that the story of the incendiary roosters was simply a 'confidence trick' on Southchurch's part.