Between 1300 and the death of Henry VIII the Calendar of State Papers contain some 100 references to Colcloughs of which some 32 are Johns, 25 Richards, 20 Williams and 14 Thomases; George, Gilbert, Henry, Hugh and Robert being one each. The surviving Manorial Rolls for Tunstall for the period 1348-1378 include the names Adam, Henry, John, Nicholas, Thomas and William which with the exception of Nicholas can be identified with individuals named in the State Papers. In addition mention is made of three ladies named Felice, one being the daughter of Richard and who received a conveyance of land from William Sneyd in 1357, one who in 1362 had her rent increased by a farthing and in 1365 was reported to the court for having brewed beer, one the daughter of Thomas who paid the Lord of the Manor two shillings to allow her to marry and one whose father was John, her brothers Henry and Nicholas and her husband Thomas Trobeshaw. In 1349 one of these Felices was awarded thirteen shillings and fourpence after a successful wager of law in the manorial court. The last mention of a female Colclough in this surviving roll is Juliana who in 1378 took proceedings against Nicole Thrower for insulting and forestalling her in Thursfield. The area covered by the Manor includes Olcott, Breerehurst, Burslem, Chell and Tunstall itself, practically the whole of which area was by that time, together with the Manor of Hanley, Colclough property.

The catalogue of minor crime by persons of the name of Colclough is interminable but it forms no part of a genealogy of the family. With the Reformation and the introduction of parish clerks and church registers surnames had to be found for the descendants of feudal serfs who had only Christian names and these were frequently a statement of their occupation or sometimes the name of the feudal lord with a possessive 's' at the end. In North Staffordshire if a nameless farm worker or miner from Chell or the Golden Hill district came to be married or have his child baptised the parish clerk would confer upon him the surname Colclough, pronounced Cole-cluff. Black's 'Titles and Forms of Address' in all its successive editions insists that the only allowable pronounciation of the name Colclough is 'Koke-li' and from that pronounciation the descendants of the thirteenth century Sir Walter and Sir William Colcleghe have never departed. At the beginning of the nineteenth century descendants of Bartholomew Colclough still occupied the Delph House at Cheadle but apart from them the family had disappeared from North Staffordshire though there were still a number of 'Cole-cluffs' about. In 1840 the Delph House at Cheadle was occupied by a miner and the twenty 'Colecluff' families in Staffordshire comprised a few farmers, half-a-dozen ale-house keepers, some small shop-keepers and a potter, James Colclough, who established the St James Pottery, which became part of the pottery combine after a century and a half of independent operation and still uses the name Colclough for its very popular Ivy Leaf pattern china which it advertises, correctly, with the slogan 'Call it Colecluff'. For many years it was advertised with a portrait of the actress Diana Wynyard and the slogan 'I love my Colclough' which during the war appeared on barrack-room walls wherever a Colclough held a commission. The Colclough painter employed by the Crown Derby pottery and whose fame rivaled that of Quaker Pegg was probably a 'Colecluff' from Stoke rather than a native of Derbyshire, but this is uncertain.

In 1843 the Stoke Union Workhouse was built at Chell and the guardians decided that the name 'Colclough' should be conferred on all foundlings brought there and nameless children born there. The result has been some hundreds of "Cole-cluff" Colcloughs still concentrated in North Staffordshire though a few of them have moved to other parts of the country or overseas. Of just over a thousand Colclough households in the British Isles 450 are to be found in Stoke-on-Trent and all of these pronounce the name Colecluff but few are able to trace their ancestry further back than 1843. The inhabitants of Stoke-on-Trent have been found to be one of the most unhealthy communities in the British Isles and when in 1990 the Staffordshire District Health Authority and Stoke-on-Trent City Council agreed with the BBC for a "soap opera" series to be broadcast from Radio Stoke carrying in it a subliminal message of the desirability of a balanced diet, regular exercise and personal cleanliness the name chosen for it was 'The Colecloughs'.

In the Introduction mention was made of Benjamin Colclough and his unfortunate end and something should be said of him even though he was a 'Cole-cluff'. He was born at Tatenhill three miles south of Burton-on-Trent in 1807, the youngest of the fairly large family of William Colclough and his wife Elizabeth nee Bunning. In the appalling economic depression of the first half of the nineteenth century he was unable to find work in the Burton-on-Trent neighbourhood and in the summer of 1839 set out for the south in the hopes of finding work harvesting. When that finished and his meagre earnings had all been spent he decided to return to his home and on his way across Salisbury Plain fell in with three others in the same plight. The four were approaching West Lavington when they met Mr Dean, a farmer from Imber returning from market with £60 in his pocket. They asked him for alms, for they were starving, and on his refusal dragged him from his horse and rifled his pockets. The others took the money but all that was left to Benjamin was Mr Dean's watch and chain. Having caught his horse and remounted Dean was searching for the robbers when he met a Mr Morgan on his way home to Gores Farm at Chitterne and enlisted his help. They soon caught up with the men who threatened to attack them if they continued the pursuit so they returned to Gore's Farm where Mr Morgan armed all his workers with shot-guns, mounted them on horses and resumed the pursuit. This impressive posse hunted the robbers across the Plain for more than three hours before they rounded them up. At the moment of surrender Benjamin dropped to the ground. One of the captors tried to kick him to his feet but found that he was dead. The other three were duly charged at the Assizes and transported for life. For starving men to have kept ahead of galloping horses for three hours seems quite remarkable and to attribute Benjamin's death from exhaustion and heart failure to the "wrath of God" as does the monument erected on the spot where he died seems unfair if not blasphemous

.

In the field of criminal law the reluctant contribution of the 'Colecluffs' has been considerable and one particularly crazy and shocking case in which a 'Colecluff' was sent to prison for a rape which he had clearly not committed was material in reforming the procedure and jurisdiction of the Court of Criminal Appeal. Less dramatic cases have involved problems in logic such as whether a 'Colecluff' in charge of an Inland Revenue stamping machine committed forgery when he sold blank paper on which the machine had impressed a stamp in the proper course of being set up and inked, or whether the Superintendent of a Salvation Army Night Shelter was the keeper of a common lodging-house subject to the Public Health Acts. The 'Colecluff' contribution to civil law is minimal compared with that of the Colcloughs whose interminable disputes take up an amount of space in both the English and Irish Law Reports which is out of all proportion to the size of the family.

The Saxon name Colclough is in no way associated with the phonetically identical name of Coakley, an anglicised version of the Gaelic name MacCaochlaoich, son of the Blind Warrior, which is that of a family which originated near Macroom in County Cork and is no more numerous than the Colcloughs but more widely spread, though with more members in Liverpool and Manchester than anywhere else in the world. In a few cases Colcloughs have adopted the spelling Coakley to avoid identification with the 'Colecluffs' and one in Trenton, Ontario, was so concerned that he might be identified with the Roman Catholic and French-Canadian Colcloughs of Quebec that he changed his name to "Clough".

There are many black Colcloughs to be found in the West Indies, the southern states of America and the Brixton area of London; these are the descendants of manumitted slaves from Colclough-owned plantations and some of them have attained positions particularly in local government which the Colclough Plantation owners might well have envied.

There were Colcloughs in Suffolk continuously for three centuries, in Staffordshire for over five, and in Nottinghamshire for three and they have been in Ireland for four-and-a half, and in America for nearly four, but in London there have always been Colcloughs since the time of the Norman Conquest. They have mostly been younger sons who having no share in the family estates have had to make their own way in trade or the professions. The records of the City Livery Companies from the earliest times include Colcloughs as freemen or liverymen of the Mercers, Drapers, Goldsmiths, Merchant Taylors, Vintners, Apothecaries, Cordwainers, Curriers, Framework-Knitters, Leathersellers and others. In 1583 Francis, a younger son of the Cheadle family, was Warden of the Stationers Company and in that capacity he sent a strong protest to Lord Burghley against the setting up of the Cambridge University Press as infringing the Company's monopoly; the family association with the Stationers lasted for well over a century and Thomas who was a liveryman in 1670 was a descendant of Francis.

The London Colcloughs mostly lived in rented accommodation though the house on Cornhill which was occupied by Thomas Colclough at the time of the fire of London was owned by his family for several generations. Few of the London Colcloughs remained in the City for more than two generations; some of the merchants and shipowners emigrated to America but the families of those who stayed were mostly extinguished in infancy by cholera, typhoid, poliomyelitis and rat-born diseases such as Wiel's disease and bubonic plague.

In spite of the building of various conduits culminating with the New River in 1630 London's water supply was for the most part merely dilute sewage; dwellings adjacent to the Thames or the Fleet discharged their sewage directly into them whilst the rest had cellars beneath them used as cess-pits which were emptied from time to time by the 'gong-fermers' or 'night men' who tipped their carts into the rivers. The inhabitants insisted on burial in the churchyards of the City and as late as 1850 the 'Builder' journal campaigning against the practice reported that the ground around most of the City churches had been raised more than six feet above the floor-level of the church by burials and that everywhere decomposing legs and arms were to be seen protruding from the heap, that coffins were covered with a mere dusting of earth and that on foggy nights when their operations could not be observed sextons would exhume decomposing bodies and burn them on great bonfires to make room for further burials. To ensure fresh milk cows were kept in dairy shops and milked to supply each customer (the last of these was in Whitechapel as late as 1950) and the ordure from these with that from the many hundreds of horses kept in the City was merely dumped in the streets. Over-crowding, atmospheric pollution and verminous infestation were amongst the many factors which militated against the London-born infant's chances of survival, yet many of the Colclough infants did survive.

Of most of the City Colcloughs we have nothing more than a record of the Livery Company to which they belonged, sometimes their place of residence, their marriage, the births and deaths of their children, the date of their death and the place of burial. An exception is Matthew Colclough whose every movement between his birth in 1521 and his death in 1583 seems to have been recorded in some surviving archive, even to what he had for dinner one evening in 1570 - baked venison, roast and boiled capon, and a custard. He was at the time Warden of the Drapers' Company, but feeling unwell excused himself from attendance at a livery dinner, and that 'collation' was sent round from the Hall to his residence in Mark Lane to comfort him.

Mathew was the third son of Richard of Endon and Blurton who was commander of the Gentlemen at Arms to Henry VIII and husband of Eleanor, daughter Sir John Draycott of Paynesley. Matthew accepted without rancour that his eldest brother John would succeed to his father's estates and the second, Anthony, to his office at Court and that if he wanted status and wealth he would have to win them for himself, and with that in mind he approached their Staffordshire neighbour, John Mynors, in 1539 with a request that he might be indentured as Mynor's apprentice. The Drapers' Company, of which Mynors was the third generation of his family to be a liveryman, held a monopoly of the wool trade which was the basis of the economic life of Tudor England but membership of it whether as a freeman or liveryman was no sinecure. An apprentice before he could be made free of the Company had to establish that he had a thorough understanding of all aspects of the production, grading, packing, transport and marketing of wool and could speak the languages of its Continental purchasers.

In September of 1545 Matthew was on his way to Calais when his pocket was picked by a Government secret agent; the following mysterious communication was abstracted and has remained in the Public Records ever since, undelivered and unexplained:-

"To Henry Southwick to Calais per Mathew Colclough servant to Master Mynor, Draper, London, 21 September.

Having ended his uncle Cave's business meant to come tomorrow to Calais but is stayed by a writ in Chancer for his appearance there fifteen days after Michaelmas about a variance there with the person where he dwells. Trusts the Company will hold him excused when he will be at Calais to supply the room to which he has been chosen. My brother Otwell thanks you for providing the wagon for his master (for which I will allow you the money) and would know this week whether you can also provide harness and collars for the horses."

The Mynors family as people of great wealth and influence and with close connections with the Continent were under constant Secret Service surveillance throughout the Tudor period.

After completing his apprenticeship and being admitted to the freedom of the Drapers Company in 1547 Matthew spent most of his time in Calais until a couple of months before its fall in 1558 when he was peremptorily ordered by the Privy Council to return to England- "to make his indelaied repaire hither". In Calais he had married first of all Catharine, daughter and heiress of Edward Dalton of the Drapers Company by whom he had a son John and a daughter Catharine, and on her death he had married in 1553 Margaret, daughter of Richard Bennett of Calais. By her he had four sons, Anthony, Tobias, George and Bennett, and when she died in 1560 he married Mary, the daughter of one Warner of London and widow of Otwell Johnson, and by her he had sons named Jeremy and Richard who died in infancy, a third son Richard and a daughter Mary.

His business was the export of wool and one would expect to find him importing in connection with it such things as wool-cards and teazles but it is surprising to find that in the year 1567 for which the London Port Books have been published he imported only 10,000 teazles and 46 dozen wool-cards but over 7,500 gallons of French wine. There were other things too- over 100 tons of pitch, some 5 000 yards of Hazebbroucks, white green and brown, flax, hemp, over 10 000 yards of canvas, and 30 cwt of hops. To accommodate his purchases of wine he rented a large cellar from a brother Draper and it was those imports which in 1576, when he was Second Warden of the Drapers Company, landed him in the Fleet Prison where, admittedly, he had the company of a number of other City dignitaries. The Acts of the Privy Council for 25 May of that year record that

"There were before their Lordships certain merchantes of London trading rance for wine and upon the proofs of their owne confession that they had sold wine above the rate of her Majesties proclamacion, certain of them viz William Abraham, John Clare, Mathew Colclough, Dominico Patchione and Cuthbert Bucle were by their Lordships letter committed to the Fleete for their contempt, and for their further punishment it was ordered they should paie unto her Majesties use for a fine of Xs for every pece of wine that they had sold above the rate of the proclamacion and that letters should be written to the Lord Mayor authorizing him that all such within the Citie that have in like case offended should be in like sorte committed to the Flete and paie such fine as aforesaid and none of them to be delivered until they shall enter into bandes to observe her Majesties proclamacion."

A week later the Council ordered that the offenders were to be

"delivered and should appeare the next Sterre Chamber day to enter into bandes to answer suche fine as should be imposed upon them for their offences and to offend no more from thenceforth."

Two years before this, in 1574, a dispute which Mathew had with one Calvetto over "certain wolles staied in the Five Ports and carried from thence by Colclough" had come to the Privy Council which had instructed the Judge of Admiralty and one of the Aldermen (John Branch, who happened to be a particular friend of Colcloughs and a fellow Draper)

"to do the best they could to compound the controversie and if they cannot end it to certify in whom the default is with their opinion on the matter, that if furder pursute be made their Lordships may give order according to right."

No "furder pursute" was made and we have no record of the finding in the matter. The only other trouble in which Matthew seems to have been involved was in February 1569 when as Junior Warden he complained to the Court of Assistants that Thomas Smyth, Draper, had described him as a "false Canckred Churle". Smyth first of all denied the charge completely then admitted that he had referred to Colclough as a "Canckred Churle" but denied calling him "false". Smyth was ordered to deposit a pledge with the Company worth not less than 20/- pending the hearing of the issue so he sent a feather mattress, a "tyke", round to the hall. On the hearing a number of witnesses gave evidence that Smyth had used the words complained of and "it was decreed by the whole Board that he should pay his fine according to the Ordinances for calling any brother of this Company by any opprobius name which fine is 20s." Smyth paid his 20s. and was told to take his "tyke" away but it was some time before he sent his servant round to collect it from the Hall.

In spite of these odd troubles Mathew seems to have been an amiable and well-liked man with whom many aspiring Drapers sought apprenticeship - the first of them having been John Mynors' son William apprenticed to him in 1554 - and would in the normal course have been Master of the Company in 1583 but for his sudden death before the Election. Of Mathew's seven sons only the second, Anthony, became a Draper; his eldest, John, became a Grocer and his fifth, Richard, a Merchant Taylor. His third, Tobias, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1569, took his B.A in 1573 and all that is recorded of him is that when Queen Elizabeth and her court visited Cambridge he composed and recited to them an ode of welcome in Latin beginning "Blanda per coelum fugito coruscum..." and in 1579 he sent a petition to Lord Walsingham complaining of his "long and unjust imprisonment by the Lady Harper whose son he had taught and brought up." The Adam who joined Toby at Trinity in 1570, taking his B.A. in 1572 and Holy Orders later and was Vicar of Sedbergh from 1585 to 1597 was not Toby's brother but a cousin from Staffordshire.

Only Mathew's second son Anthony became a Draper. He was apprenticed to his father and after Mathew's death his apprenticeship seems to have gone into abeyance and it was not until 1590 that he was admitted to the freedom, presumably on the basis of patrimony. The eldest son John who carried on business as a merchant-banker was very much involved in the affairs of the Grocers' Company who admitted him to the livery in 1592 and five years later the Company also admitted his son Anthony and, many years later his grandson Thomas. Of Mathew's dozen grandsons several were christened Anthony after their grand-uncle and it is difficult to work out which of them was the Merchant Taylor whose son, also Anthony, was at Merchant Taylors School from 1598 to 1604 and like his father became a liveryman of the Company.

George, one of Mathew's grandsons, returned to Staffordshire and was living at Trentham in 1619 when his son Thomas was born. This Thomas, too, became a Grocer, having been apprenticed in 1637 to Thomas Gower, a liveryman, and with other members of his family became involved in shipowning, trading to Virginia. The pattern of trade evolved in the course of time by the considerable fleet of ships in which they had shares was sailing from Bristol with trade goods for the West African coast where they loaded slaves and proceeded to Virginia. There they loaded tobacco to be brought back to Bristol. Of the Cheadle family Bartholomew's grandson George was admitted to the Drapers Company in 1642 as apprentice of Robert Earle and in due course was admitted to the Livery. He too became a shipowner trading to America, dying in Virginia in 16 --

Thomas became a Common Councillor of the City of London but during the Civil War and the Protectorate he, like most of his colleagues, tried to maintain a very 'low profile'. The Virginian tobacco which his ships imported mostly came from his own plantations which had to be kept supplied with essentials not available locally including such things as malt and gunpowder and to export these from England required special licences from Cromwell himself for which on occasion Thomas had to apply. In 1658 Thomas was one of eight signatories to a "Petition of the Merchants and Traders to Virginia" to the Privy Council claiming that

"...diverse persons having in a hostile manner opposed the execution of the law for suppressing the planting of English tobacco, the petitioners pray that direction may be given to destroy the tobacco and secure the peace of the country."

This petition was referred to Mr. Comptroller and the Lords Cromwell, Desborough and Lisle Strickland to report and the outcome is found in a letter dated July 31 1658 "from Jo. Beaman to Thos. Colclough, Cornhill. Our hopeful proceedings are clouded for this morning. I got together 36 horse and went to Cheltenham early and found an armed multitude guarding the tobacco field. We broke through them and went into the town but found no peace officer but a rabble of men and women calling for blood for their tobacco so had there been any action blood would have been spilt. The soldiers stood firm and with cocked pistols bade the multitude disperse but they would not and 200 more came from Winchcombe. Major Clarke is not come and I want advice. Ten men would not in 4 days destroy the good Tobacco about Cheltenham. The Cornet would not act and some of the County troops are dealers and planters. I was forced to retreat; the justices rather hinder than help us. The soldiers say if this be suffered, farewell all levies and taxes, and farewell the Virginia trade for tobacco. I can do nothing till I hear from you."

There is no further record of this incident but twenty years later Thomas was organiser of a petition to the King from seventy-six "Merchants, planters and traders to the English Plantations in America but more especially Virginia setting forth the great detriment of planting tobacco in England and imploring that an Act of Parliament be speedily passed to prevent the abuse"

One of the Virginia plantations which Thomas owned jointly with another London liveryman, John Jeffries, was managed for them by one Giles Cale. In August 1669 Thomas and his partner complained to the Governor of Virginia that Cale had failed to provide accounts or payments and ignored all communications from the proprietors. The Governor summoned Cale to appear before him but he ignored the summons and was never heard of again. It was then found that he had disposed of the plantation to an innocent third-party with the assistance of forged documents of title but the final outcome of the matter is not recorded.

After the fire of London Thomas was a member, and for a time chairman, of the committee of the Common Council detailed re-plan the City and allocate sites to former proprietors the boundaries of whose land could not be determined in the ruins, and he seems to have been instrumental in securing the services of Sir Christopher Wren. The Cornhill site which he allocated to himself to replace his former home is now occupied by a bank which values it in its balance sheet at some tens of millions of pounds.

Thomas married on October 5, 1644, Elizabeth, daughter of Forth Gooday of the Merchant Taylors Company. Some months before the wedding his father-in-law-to-be going to Ipswich to collect a cargo which had arrived there for him was met with an unexpected customs levy of £250. Having only £125 with him he borrowed the balance locally and started off to London to collect the balance of £125 but was immediately arrested as an absconding debtor and thrown into prison. He was kept there for over two months before his friends and relations could find out what had happened to him and Thomas rode down to Ipswich with the necessary £125 to secure his release.

Thomas died on 31 December 1680 and was buried in St. Olaves, Hart Street, after a funeral service at St. Michael's, Poultry. His will was proved in the following year.

Of the other fifty or so Colclough liverymen of the City there is little to record save their parentage, dates of their birth, their marriages, their children, the companies of which they were liverymen and the dates of their death. They all seem to have led blameless and uneventful existences, lived comfortably within their means and to have left nothing when they died except, in the sixteenth century "...a sword and buckler, a mazarine gown and a beaver hat."