Sir William Coffin 1495

One of the most celebrated men of the family was Sir William Coffin. Born about 1495, younger brother of Richard Coffin, lord of the manor of Alwington and High Sheriff of Devon in the late 15th century. T.L. Pridham’s Devonshire Celebrities records the following curious story about Sir William Coffin:

“Sir William Coffin was on one occasion passing Bideford churchyard, and seeing a number of people standing idle, he inquired the reason, and was told that the corpse of a man had been brought there to be interred, and the mourners were all assembled, but the priest had refused to read the burial service, as the friends of the deceased would not render up the dead man’s cow, which was the only property that was left, out of which to pay the priest’s fee or mortuary. On hearing this, Sir William sent for the priest, and required him to perform the duties of his office, which on his still refusing to do, Sir William ordered the sexton and others to place him in the new-made grave, and bury him instead of the corpse; but the priest, preferring life to such a kind of death, repented ere it was too late, though not until the threat had been in a great measure carried out. This act of Sir William’s might have proved of serious consequences to himself, for in those days such an offence against a priest would be looked upon as most culpable, and might have cost any other man his life. As it was, the circumstance was made known to the king (Henry VIII), and Sir William was summoned before parliament. However, the interest which he possessed in the House, and the favour he was in at court, saved him from punishment, and, seizing the opportunity to draw the attention of parliament to the mischievous consequences of the priests’ arbitrary demand of mortuaries, he begged parliament to take the matter into serious consideration, and so diverted the storm which he had expected would have fallen on his own head. An act was soon passed which put a stop to such disgraceful practices, and limited, on favour of the poor, the extent to which such demands could be carried.”

William joined Henry VIII’s household about 1515, and took part, as a gentleman of the privy chamber, in the tournament between Henry VIII and the French King held at Guisnes in 1519. The following year William accompanied the King to the ‘Field of the Cloth of Gold’ where he appears to have been chosen by Henry VIII as one of the champions in those celebrated tournaments..

He was Master of the Horse at the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533.

On 18 Oct 1537 William Coffin was knighted, having by then become steward not only of Queen Jane’s manor and liberties of Standon in Hertfordshire, but also (in 1535) of Hitchin, another royal manor in the same county. In that capacity, it was his duty on 17 Oct 1538 to receive the surrender to the Crown of the priory of Hitchin from the Prior and his brethren.

But within two months, on 8 Dec 1538, Sir William died of the plague. His widow wrote from Standon to the King’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, asking him to inform the King that her husband had “died of the great sickness, full of God's marks all over his body”, and begging Cromwell to let her know how she and her servants now stood.

At Sir William Coffin's death, it was found that he had bequeathed his best horses and a cast of his best hawks to his master, the king. The bulk of his large estates he bequeathed to his elder brother’s son, Richard Coffin. He died in the year 1538, and was buried at Standon, in Hertfordshire, of which place he had been High Steward.

He is commemorated by an inscription on a slab at the foot of the chancel steps. (Prior to the church's restoration in 1864, this slab had been in the centre of the chancel immediately above the steps). The inscription reads:

“Here lies William Coffin, Knight, sometime of the privy chamber with his sovereign Lord King Henry the eighth, Master of the Horse unto queen Jane the most lawful wife unto the aforesaid King Henry the eighth, and high steward of all the liberty [and] manor of Standon in the county of Hertford, which William deceased the eighth day of december Anno domini 1538, [in] the thirtieth year of the reign of King Henry the eighth.”