We have seen that Coker, a royal manor for some time before and after the Conquest, passed in the early part of the twelfth century into the possession of Richard de Redvers as tenant-in-chief, and from his son Baldwin de Redvers by sub-infeudation to the de Mandevilles. The daughter of William de Redvers or de Vernon, fifth earl of Devon in that creation, married Robert de Courtenay, and their issue succeeded to the de Redvers's Okehampton estate. John de Courtenay, son of Robert, died in 1274 and Hugh de Courtenay followed him in 1291. His son, another Hugh, inherited the estate and to him reverted the manors of Coker (East and West), when Robert, son of John de Mandeville, was, as we have seen, outlawed for felony. Robert de Mandeville does not appear to have sat down quietly under his dispossession and he was assisted by the intricacies which lawyers had introduced into the feudal law to the advantage of the feudal tenant. In 1311–12 he brought an action against Hugh de Courtenay and others for disseising him of a tenement in East Coker and West Coker pertaining to the manor of East Coker and the hundred of Coker. Hugh alleged that the tenement had been forfeited by wrongful alienation to a religious house; Robert's claim was dismissed, when he failed to appear at the trial at Chard, being at the time a prisoner in Newgate for debt.