Richard Newcourt

• Illustration — After Elizabeth Hext (pictured) died in 1657, Richard Newcourt was granted admonition of her will. He was the second son of Philip Newcourt of Tiverton, Devon, and his wife Mary (née Tucker). Newcourt was baptised at Washfield, near Tiverton. In 1633 he is recorded as having been granted admonition of the will of Sir Edward Hext, his father's half-brother, and in 1657 he received permission to act in the same capacity for Hext's daughter Elizabeth, the widow of Sir John Stawell of Cothelstone, Somerset. He became possessed of an estate at Somerton, Somerset, where he lived. In November 1652, Parliament resolved that Newcourt's name should be inserted into the "Additional Bill for Sale of several Lands and Estates forfeited to the Commonwealth for Treason."

Following the Great Fire, Newcourt drew up a plan for the rebuilding of the City of London. He proposed laying the city out on a grid system, which would have divided it into 64 equal portions. Four adjoining divisions would have been left open to form a large central square, surrounded by houses after the pattern of those in the Piazza at Covent Garden, and four others would also have provided open spaces, one of them containing the rebuilt St Paul's Cathedral. Each of the other 55 areas would have formed a single parish, with a church and churchyard at its centre. A wharf, 60 yards wide would have run along the river, lined by an unbroken row of buildings raised on arches. Newcourt also produced a variant plan, under which the city would have been divided into only 39 parishes. The full text of his manuscript was published in the first volume of David Hughson's London in 1805.

Newcourt died in 1679, and was buried with his wife at Somerton. In his will, dated 25 March 1675, and proved on 4 July 1679, he mentions his eldest son, also named Richard Newcourt, his second son, Gerard, who succeeded him at Somerton; and his daughter, Mary, wife of Thomas Spicer of Somerton.