I had an email from Ted Flack, who lives in Queensland, Australia, to discuss his family history research:

‘I have been researching my Cockshutt family history for several years and I am fascinated with John Cockshutt, Town Clerk of Preston, and the possible connection with Johannes Cockshutt who was also a lawyer and whose pertrait is displayed in the National Gallery.’

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See also: an article on the later Cockshutts of Preston in an article by Pat Harrison in the latest issue of the Friends of Winckley Square newsletter

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Ted has making effective use of AI to help him in his research. With his permission, I’ve posted below the report that ChatGPT provided him with. I think it serves as a good example of how useful AI can be as an intelligent assitant in any work local historians undertake. I am finding it invaluable for transcribing handwritten documents, a task that previously occupied hours of my time.

This is the task Ted gave to ChatGPT: ‘Act as a genealogist expert to help me work out whether John Cockshut who is recorded as a gentleman of the Inner Court is the same person who became the Town Clerk of Preston in the 17th Century.’ And this is the response, which runs to more than 2,500 words:

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Genealogical investigation: Was John Cockshut of the Inner Court the Town Clerk of Preston?

My preliminary assessment is that the two men may well have been the same person, but the identification needs documentary proof. The key is to establish precisely what the description “a gentleman of the Inner Court” means, and then connect that individual to the John Cockshutt who served as Town Clerk of Preston in the late seventeenth century.

I would approach this as a historical identity problem, using contemporary legal records, Preston municipal records, family relationships and chronology rather than relying on similarity of names alone.

There are three particularly important considerations:

• Surname variants: Cockshut, Cockshutt, Cocksott and similar spellings may refer to the same family. Spelling was not standardised in seventeenth-century records.
• Legal occupation: The Preston John Cockshutt has been described as an attorney of the Court of Common Pleas. A reference to a legal institution or profession could therefore provide a strong link, provided we interpret the original wording correctly.
• Chronology and social connections: Evidence connecting the man to Preston, and ideally to the same associates, relatives or property, would be more persuasive than the name alone.

1. The National Portrait Gallery provides a crucial clue

John Cockshutt (1639–1669)

National Portrait Gallery, London · Reference NPG D29995

The Gallery identifies this John Cockshutt as a Member of the Inner Temple, with dates of 1639–1669. The portrait is an engraving by David Loggan, after an unknown artist, published in 1679.

National Portrait Gallery

View the National Portrait Gallery entry

This establishes an important point: the original description is Inner Temple, not “Inner Court”. The Inner Temple is one of London’s historic Inns of Court, associated with the legal profession.

However, the dates raise a serious problem for identifying him with Preston’s Town Clerk.

If the Gallery’s death date of 1669 is correct, this John Cockshutt could not have taken up an appointment as Town Clerk in 1694, some 25 years later.

We therefore need to test whether the dates are reliable, whether the two records concern different men, or whether the traditional identification of the Preston official is itself mistaken.

2. What do the Preston records tell us?

The local-history website Preston History brings together several valuable pieces of evidence about the Preston Cockshutt family.

Date	Evidence	Genealogical significance
1662	John Cockshott, gentleman, and his son Edmund appear on Preston’s Guild roll.	Establishes a Cockshott/Cockshutt family in Preston.
1673	John Cockshutt is described as an attorney of His Majesty’s Court of Common Pleas in a sacrament certificate.	Strong evidence of a Preston lawyer named John Cockshutt.
1682	John Cockshutt, gentleman, appears with sons Edmund, George and Thomas on the Guild roll.	Suggests an established household and provides potential family identifiers.
1683	Lawrence Rawstorne refers to “Coz. Cockshoot” in his diary.	Offers a possible family connection and a way to track the individual through other records.
1694	A later historical account attributes the Town Clerk appointment to John Cockshutt.	Needs verification against contemporary municipal records.

The sources are discussed in Preston History’s entry on John Cockshutt and its transcription of the December 1683 diaries.

The 1673 certificate is particularly important. It proves that a man of this name was practising in the legal sphere in Preston, but it does not by itself prove that he was the London-trained Inner Temple member shown in the portrait.

3. A significant complication: who actually was Preston’s Town Clerk?

Further examination reveals an important problem with the traditional account.

Preston History records that Josiah Gregson was elected Town Clerk in 1684. Its separate entry for John Roberts records him as Town Clerk in October 1695 and on a municipal document dated 1698.

This means the statement that John Cockshutt became Town Clerk in 1694 cannot safely be accepted without checking the original evidence.

It is possible that the office changed hands more than once, that different duties or appointments are being conflated, or that a later historian misidentified the official. We should not choose between these explanations without further records.

4. Could the Inner Temple man have been the Preston lawyer?

Here is my assessment of the competing possibilities.

Possibility A: They were the same man

Chronological difficulty

This would require the National Portrait Gallery’s 1639–1669 dates to be wrong, or a different explanation for the identification. The matching name and legal associations are suggestive, but the dates currently argue against it.

Possibility B: They were two different men

Credible alternative

The Inner Temple member may have been a different John Cockshutt, while the Preston lawyer was another member of the same family. Establishing a family connection would be valuable even if the men were not identical.

Possibility C: The Preston Town Clerk identification is incorrect

The 1694 appointment may have been attributed to the wrong man by a later writer. The evidence for Gregson and Roberts makes this a serious possibility that deserves investigation.

5. The research I would undertake next

I would prioritise the following original sources, in this order.

1. The Inner Temple admission and membership records. Establish when John Cockshutt entered the Inn, his parentage, place of origin and any recorded death or biographical information. The National Portrait Gallery entry is the starting point, not the final proof.
2. The 1673 Preston sacrament certificate. Examine Lancashire Archives reference QSJ/8/3/96 to determine exactly what it says about the attorney and whether it supplies additional identifying details.
3. Preston’s Guild rolls for 1662 and 1682. Consult W. A. Abram’s published rolls and, where possible, the underlying records. The sons Edmund, George and Thomas may provide the strongest family identifiers.
4. Preston’s Court Leet and municipal records, 1684–1700. Look for appointment entries, signatures, accounts and official documents naming Gregson, Roberts or Cockshutt as Town Clerk.
5. The Rawstorne and Bellingham diaries. Follow references to Cockshutt, Cockshott and Cockshoot, particularly the description of him as a cousin of Lawrence Rawstorne. These may help distinguish the Preston family from other Cockshutts.

6. My preliminary conclusion

At present, I would not identify the National Portrait Gallery’s John Cockshutt (1639–1669) as Preston’s Town Clerk. The chronology is the principal obstacle, and the identity of the Town Clerk around 1694–1698 needs clarification.

The most promising route is to establish the identity and family background of the Inner Temple member independently, then compare those findings with the Preston lawyer documented in 1673 and the Cockshutt family recorded in the Guild rolls.

One question would help sharpen the next stage of the investigation:

Where did you encounter the description “a gentleman of the Inner Court”? Was it in the National Portrait Gallery’s entry, in an old family history, in a genealogical database, or in another document?

If you can provide the exact wording or a photograph of the original reference, we may be able to trace the description to its source and determine whether it contains the missing link between the two men.

Acting as a genealogist investigate the possible relationship between John Cockshutt (often recorded as an attorney or gentleman of Preston, and linked in records to the Court of Common Pleas in the 17th century), and the Johannes Cockshutt or John Cockshutt (1639–1669), a member of the Inner Temple who is identified as the sitter in the portrait in the National Gallery

Research report: The relationship between the two John Cockshutts

Genealogical investigation · Evidence reviewed to 27 October 2026

Executive finding

The available evidence currently supports two distinct historical identities, with a possible but unproved family relationship. It does not establish that the Inner Temple member and the Preston attorney were the same man.

The decisive issue is chronology. The National Portrait Gallery identifies its sitter as John Cockshutt, 1639–1669, a member of the Inner Temple. Meanwhile, Preston records identify a John Cockshutt as an attorney in 1673 and record the burial of a Mr John Cockshutt at Preston on 1 May 1694. These dates cannot all describe one person if the Gallery’s death date is correct.

National Portrait Gallery+2

That does not mean the research ends here. There is a particularly intriguing connection worth pursuing: the Inner Temple John Cockshutt was associated with a substantial literary legacy to the Cambridge Platonist philosopher Henry More, while the Preston Cockshutts belonged to a documented family of gentlemen and lawyers. The question is whether contemporary records can connect these two worlds.

1. Establishing the identities separately

A. John Cockshutt, 1639–1669

London · Inner Temple

The National Portrait Gallery catalogues an engraving by David Loggan, published in 1679, depicting John Cockshutt (1639–1669), identified as a Member of the Inner Temple. The entry gives the portrait reference as NPG D29995.

National Portrait Gallery

The publication date is nine years after the sitter’s recorded death. That is not unusual for a posthumous engraving and is consistent with the portrait’s being produced from an earlier image.

Examine the portrait record

B. John Cockshutt, gentleman and attorney

Preston, Lancashire · Active in the 1660s–1690s

Preston History reports that John Cockshott, gentleman, appeared on the 1662 Guild roll with his son Edmund. A John Cockshutt, gentleman, appeared on the 1682 roll with sons Edmund, George and Thomas. A Preston sacrament certificate dated 6 July 1673 describes a John Cockshutt as “Attorney of his Majestyes Court of Comon Pleas”.

preston history+1

The parish burial index records Mr John Cockshutt’s burial on 1 May 1694.

lan-opc.org.uk

Examine the Preston evidence

An important distinction: membership of the Inner Temple identifies a legal association, not necessarily a particular job or place of residence. The Inner Temple was one of the historic Inns of Court, whose members trained and practised within the English legal profession.

The Inner Temple

It is therefore quite possible for two Cockshutts to have had legal connections. It is not, however, safe to infer identity from that shared profession.

2. The most intriguing lead: a £300 legacy to Henry More

A separate source opens a potentially important line of investigation.

The Galileo Project’s biographical entry for Henry More states that John Cockshutt of the Inner Temple left More a legacy of £300 to have his principal works translated into Latin. More undertook the work, and his Opera omnia appeared in two volumes in 1679. The entry describes the Inner Temple Cockshutt as a man about whom little biographical information was known.

galileo.library.rice.edu

This is a valuable clue for three reasons:

1. It gives the London-based Cockshutt an identifiable activity beyond his legal affiliation.
2. It suggests that he had sufficient means to leave a substantial legacy.
3. It provides a documentary trail through More’s biography, correspondence, published works and potentially his estate or testamentary records.

The £300 legacy is not evidence of a Preston connection by itself. Nevertheless, it gives us a specific event around which to organise further research.

The dates also matter. More’s Opera omnia was published in 1679, while the Preston John Cockshutt is documented in 1673 and associated with a burial in 1694. If the Inner Temple man’s death in 1669 is accurate, his legacy must have been made before that date, with the translation and publication occurring subsequently.

A possible hypothesis is that the two men were related and that the Preston Cockshutt was a brother, cousin or other relative of the London lawyer. At present, however, there is no direct evidence establishing such a relationship.

3. What does “Johannes Cockshutt” tell us?

Johannes is the Latin form of John. Its appearance in a Latin legal, academic or ecclesiastical document would not ordinarily indicate a different person.

Likewise, historical records may spell the surname as Cockshutt, Cockshott, Cockshoot or Cockshed. Preston History itself cautions that several of the local references may or may not concern the same individual.

preston history

For this investigation, I would therefore search under all these variants, together with:

• John and Johannes;
• gent., gentleman and attorney;
• Inner Temple and Temple;
• Preston and Lancashire;
• the names Edmund, George and Thomas, recorded as sons of the Preston gentleman.

The children’s names are particularly useful because they can help distinguish the Preston household from another family with the same surname.

4. The Town Clerk question needs to be resolved independently

There is a further complication that affects the Preston man’s identification.

Preston History attributes the Town Clerk appointment in 1694 to John Cockshutt on the authority of a 1908 edition of Thomas Bellingham’s diary. However, the same historical sources identify Josiah Gregson as Town Clerk from 1684, and John Roberts is documented as Town Clerk in 1695 and 1698.

preston history+2

The parish burial record for John Cockshutt on 1 May 1694 is an independent piece of evidence. It makes it especially important to determine exactly what the original municipal records say, rather than assuming that the reported appointment was correct.

This discrepancy may be a separate historical error, but it could also help distinguish different men of the same name.

5. The records most likely to establish the relationship

I would now concentrate on four research avenues.

Priority 1 — Inner Temple admissions and membership records

The Inner Temple’s archive contains admissions, membership and professional records, and its published calendars cover the relevant period. These may establish the London man’s father’s name, origin and legal career.

The Inner Temple+1

Inner Temple archives and records

Priority 2 — The Inner Temple man’s will or estate records

Investigate probate records for a John Cockshutt who died in 1669, looking particularly for the £300 legacy to Henry More, relatives, executors and places of origin. The will or related accounts could reveal a family connection to Lancashire.

Priority 3 — Preston Guild rolls, parish records and the 1673 certificate

Establish the Preston household’s relationships from the original records, then search for baptisms, marriages, burials and probate documents involving Edmund, George and Thomas Cockshutt. The 1673 certificate is catalogued as Lancashire Archives reference QSJ/8/3/96.

preston history

Priority 4 — Henry More’s papers and the literary legacy

Trace the original evidence for the £300 bequest, including any surviving correspondence, testamentary material or publication prefaces. A named executor, relative or Lancashire connection would be especially valuable. The published Opera omnia of 1679 provides a starting point.

galileo.library.rice.edu

6. Evidence assessment

Question	Current assessment
Was the portrait sitter a member of the Inner Temple?	Established by the National Portrait Gallery catalogue.
Was a John Cockshutt practising as an attorney in Preston in 1673?	Supported by the contemporary sacrament certificate catalogue entry.
Was a John Cockshutt buried in Preston in 1694?	Supported by the parish burial index.
Were the London and Preston men the same person?	Unlikely if the recorded 1669 death date is correct.
Were they related?	Possible, but no direct evidence yet establishes a relationship.
Did the Preston attorney become Town Clerk in 1694?	Requires further verification against municipal records.

Final genealogical opinion

I would provisionally treat the two men as separate individuals until a primary source demonstrates otherwise, while actively investigating whether they belonged to the same extended family.

The £300 legacy to Henry More is the most distinctive lead uncovered in this investigation. The Inner Temple admission records and the London man’s testamentary records offer the best prospects of identifying his parentage and origin. The Preston Guild rolls and parish records can then be used to test whether those details match the Lancashire family.

One potentially decisive finding would be an admission record or will naming the Inner Temple man’s father as a Cockshutt of Lancashire, or identifying a brother or cousin connected with Preston.

That would move the research from a shared-name hypothesis towards a demonstrable family relationship.

If you want, I can:

• Request detailed Inner Temple membership records for John Cockshutt (1639–1669)
• Analyze Preston Parish and Guild records for John Cockshutt and his family
• Investigate probate or will documents linking Inner Temple Cockshutt to Henry More and Lancashire