The earliest known recorded information relating to COTTLE in England was Berengarius COTEL who is recorded in the Doomsday Book, on the geld roll for Wiltshire in 1084 where he held one hide of land in Danworth. This would indicate that he must have come over with William the Conqueror or soon thereafter to have received that land. Berengarius is an ancient family name, being the name of two Holy Roman Emperors. Berengaria of Navarre became the wife of King Richard I of England in 1190.1
The family became established at Atworth in Wiltshire but also the family spread fairly quickly to Gloucestershire (Frampton Cotel) and Somerset, (Camerton) and there are records of the family in these Counties in the early 1100’s. By the mid 1200’s the COTTLEs had extensive estates in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset.
By the mid 1300’s the family was also established in Devon, (Sampford Peverell) and Cornwall (Cotele, near Calstock).
There was a publication titled "A History of the COTTEL, COTTELL, or COTEL Family, of the counties of Devon, Somerset, Cornwall and Wilts" by W.H.COTTELL published in 1871. It states:
"The original name of this family was Cotel, subsequently changed to Cottell, Cottel, and Cottle. There is little doubt that the first Cotel came to England from France, where many Cotels are still to be found. The first Cotel came with the army of William the Conqueror in 1066, and probably settled in Wiltshire, giving name of Cotels to the chapelry* of that country.
Brief records of the family soon after the Norman Conquest also appear in connection with the adjoining counties of Somerset and Gloucester. The first lengthened account of the family, however, is obtained from Collinson’s History of Somerset, wherein, in naming the possessors of the manor of Camerton, near Bath, he says that in the time of Henry I, Abbot Herlewin ( Abbot of Glastonbury), whose extravagance and profuse liberality involved his church in many difficulties and much disgrace, gave the manor of Camerton, then called Camelerton, to one Sir Robert de Cotel, Knight, his favorite.
Cotel, at Herlewin’s death in 1120, entered on this estate and many others which he had obtained by the same Abbot’s indiscretion. He died himself soon after, and Sigfried, succeeding to the abbacy, set about proving his right to this manor, which in the time of his successor, Henry de Blois, was peaceably ceded to the Abbey, notwithstanding which, the same family of Cotel continued, for a long succession, tenants under the respective Abbots of Glastonbury. In the aid levied for marrying the King’s daughter, 12th3 Henry II, (1166) Richard Cotel is certified to hold twenty pounds’ worth of land which formerly belonged to the demesnes* and refectories of the monks of Glastonbury Abbey. He was exempt from doing service for the same, perhaps through an indulgence to the children of Sir Robert de Cotel, who claimed this manor by virtue of the grant made to him by Abbot Herlewin.
To this Sir Richard Cotel succeeded Sir William Cotel (born about 1214), who was a knight in the time of Henry III. Sir Richard left issue, Sir Ellys Cotel, who held this manor, and free warren by charter in 32nd King Henry III (1248) of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, by reason of an award made in favor of that see during the dissensions with the Abbots of Glastonbury.
This Sir Ellys Cotel was succeeded by his son, also a Sir Ellys Cotel (died 1337), who presented the manor to the church of Camerton in 9th of Edward III (1336), and was the last of the name that had any concern with the place. In the same work, among “Les Chevaliers and Hommes du Mark,” in the county of Somerset, in the 17th Edward I (1289), appears the name of “Sire Ellys Cottel,” whose armorial escutcheon is there given as, “Or, a bend gules.”
This escutcheon has been the invariable armorial bearings of all Cottells or Cottles using arms from that period unto the present time. The coat is represented by the authorities at Heralds’ College to rank among the highest honours of heraldry; the blood-red band across the shield of gold being one of the nine honorable ordinaries, and symbolical of its wearer having distinguished himself valiantly in war. This Sir Ellys, or Elias Cottell, seems to have been a person of great note and distinction. He was a man-at-arms in the 17th of Edward I (1289), and with that monarch, in all hys warres in Scotland and elsewhere agaynst Robert de Bruis, usurper, as appeareth by an old chronicle.” He was likewise subescheator* to the king for the county of Wilts, and the owner of several manors and lands in that and the county of Somerset. He held a knight’s fee in Croscombe, near Shepton Mallet, in 5th Edward II (1312), and in 9th Edward III (1336). John Atti Chambre held at Whiteoxmead one messuage,* ten acres of arable, and two acres of wood, by service of suit at the three weeks court of the said Sir Ellys Cotel, at Camerton. He also, by his marriage with Margaret, daughter and co-heir of Sir John de Peverell, Alree Peverell, and Halberton, in the county of Devon. He died at Sampford Peverell in 1337, leaving as heiress his daughter, Edith, at that time thirty years of age, and the wife of Sir Oliver de Dinham, Knight, who carried his possessions into the Dinham family. A branch of the family of Cotel was also settled at a very early period at Frampton, in Gloucestershire. Atkyns, in his history of that county, says, “[The Manor of Frampton Cotterell], soon after the Norman Conquest belonged to the family of the Cotels.
John Cotel, the last of the family, died, seized thereof, the 29th Henry III (1245), and the parish had before obtained the name of Frampton Cotel from that family. One of the co-heirs of this John Cotel was his sister Maud, who in 20th Henry III (1236) had become the second wife of Sir William Lucy, of Charlecote, county of Warwick, and who had brought him as her inheritance the manor of Berenton, in Hampshire. Arms of Cotel of Frampton: Or, a bend gules.
It has been noticed that Sir Ellys Cotel before named was subescheator for the county of Wilts. Sir Ellys, doubtless, was related to William Cotel, of Cotel, in the time of Edward II, and to Richard Cotel, of Atworth, in that county, whose daughter Isolde married Phillip Tropnell in the year 1267. The Cotels at that time appeared to have been a rich and powerful family. They owned extensive estates in many parishes in Wilts, including Atworth, Alwick, Chelworth, Wraxall, and Farley Wick, and at the breaking up of the monasteries in 1540 possessed nearly the whole of the land in the last-named parish. The chapelry and mansion of Cotels, now called Cottles, near Melksham, derive that name from this family, many descendants of which are to be found in Somerset and Wilts, two of these having been Joseph Cottle, the poet (the friend of Southey and Coleridge) and Amos Cottle, also a poet, who were the sons of a merchant clothier of Trowbridge. Aubrey, in his Wiltshire Notes, year 1670, thus wrote of the family: Cotells…this is in the parish of Atworth, and was anciently belonging to Cotell, who had great possessions in these parts; vide de hoc the Leiger Book of Tropnell at Neston, where it is at large recited. There is an old house with large windows, as in the church, of the time of the first Edward. This “old house” has long since disappeared and been replaced by a modern mansion, possessed by Captain Connelly, lately high sheriff for Wilts:”