Richard Duke (English lawyer)
Richard Duke was a lawyer and served as Clerk of the Court of Augmentations which position assisted him in acquiring large grants of former monastic lands in the West Country following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He served as MP for Weymouth in 1545 and for Dartmouth in 1547 and as Sheriff of Devon in 1563–64.
Crest of Duke: A demi-griffin salient argent, holding in its dexter claw a chaplet azure. Depiction incised on monumental brass of Duke's great-nephew Richard III Duke (1567–1641), Otterton Church
Remains of Otterton Priory, used as the residence of the Duke family, whose arms are sculpted in stone on the porch above the door
Arms of Duke family sculpted on porch of Otterton Priory. The arms of Duke (Per fesse argent and azure, three chaplets counterchanged) occupy the 1st & 4th quarters, but the arms in the 2nd & 3rd quarters are now worn away by age. They are said to be the arms of William Duke (mayor of Exeter in 1460) quartered with those of Poer (Per pale wavy azure and or), the family of his wife Cecily Poer, daughter and heiress of Roger Poer of Powershayes. The crest of Duke on the helm above is
Arms of Poer (or Power) family of Hayes, East Budleigh (15th century), later quartered by Duke family of Otterton, as formerly visible on porch of Otterton Priory: Per pale wavy azure and or
Otterton is a village and civil parish in East Devon, England. The parish lies on the English Channel and is surrounded clockwise from the south by the parishes of East Budleigh, Bicton, Colaton Raleigh, Newton Poppleford and Harpford and Sidmouth. In 2001 its population was 700, compared to 622 a hundred years earlier. At the 2011 census the population had reduced to 656. Otterton is part of Raleigh electoral ward whose total population at the above census was 2,120.
Fore Street, Otterton
