John Southcote (died 1585)
English judge and Member of Parliament
Sir John Southcote (1510/11–1585) was an English judge and politician.
Life
He was the second son of William Southcote and his wife Alice Tregonnell, and grandson of Nicholas Southcote of Chudleigh, Devon. He was a member of the Middle Temple, where he was autumn reader in 1556, and again on his call to the degree of serjeant-at-law, April 1559. In 1553 he sat in Parliament for Lewes, and then Steyning.
Southcote was appointed justice of the Queen's Bench on 10 February 1563. He sat alongside Chief Justice Sir Robert Catlin during the trial of Robert Hickford on 9 February 1572, a retainer of the Duke of Norfolk who was indicted for supporting the queen's enemies. He also served as assessor to the peers during the trial of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. In addition, he participated in the November–December 1577 conference on the legal approach to handling recusants.
In May 1584 Southcote retired and was succeeded by John Clench. He died on 18 April 1585.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q18819533. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1510, 1585, 1556 and 1559.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Southcote (died 1585)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.