Thomas Colepeper

Thomas Colepeper ( – 1613) was an English Member of Parliament. Career Thomas was the eldest of the four sons of John Colepeper of Wigsell (died 1612) in the parish of Salehurst, East Sussex: the others were William, John and Alexander, of whom William is thought to have died young. Their mother was Elizabeth (died 1618), daughter of William Sedley of Southfleet, Kent. He matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford in 1579 and entered the Middle Temple in 1583, where he was still in residence as an inner barrister in 1596. It is claimed that Colepeper's later interest in the colonization of America was stimulated by his attachment to the Middle Temple, where the great voyages of that age were a current preoccupation. In 1597 he married the daughter of a leading overseas merchant, Alderman Stephen Slaney, Lord Mayor of London in 1595. He was a Member (MP) of the Parliament of England for Winchelsea in 1597 and Rye in 1601. His predecessor as MP for Rye, Sampson Lennard, was the brother of Colepeper's brother-in-law Samuel Lennard, whose wife Elizabeth was the sister of Thomas's first wife Anne Slaney. Samuel and Elizabeth were the parents of Stephen, the first of the Lennard baronets of West Wickham, Kent.