One of Richard’s ancestor’s Ralph Secheville, represented Tavistock in the Parliament of 1295, and another, John, did so in seven Parliaments between 1332 fand 1340. His putative father, who was portreeve of Tavistock in 1389-90 and held several properties at Inswell and elsewhere in the lordship of Hurdwick as well as in the town itself, died shortly before July 1421.
In about 1433, quite likely at the time of his final appearance in the House of Commons, Secheville brought an action in Chancery against Henry Fortescue, the former chief justice of Ireland, for illegally dispossessing him of messuages and land sin Nethercombe in Holbeton, Devon, for false awards and for ‘assaults with Irysshermen, Scottys and other’ on his wife, Margery, and her mother. He claimed that the lands ‘with howsynge thereuppon’ had been occupied by Margery’s family since 1349 for an annual rent of 16s. payable to Hugh Cumba and his descendants, of whom Fortescue was one. But the latter and his brother Richard, supported by an Irish rablle, had broken into his house while he and his family were in bed, and with ‘orrible governance, crying and shotte ... caste owte [his] children, al naked, sore wepinge and cryinge’, his wife ‘beynge grete and quyeke with childe, her moder, and here son and lefte hem there for dede, which was the cause of the saide childe’s deth’; moreover, they held Secheville himselfe prisoner first in Exeter and then, for three years, in London, so that, and because of his subsequent impoverishment, he was unable to sue for justice until six years after the eviction. Eventually compromise agreements were reached with Fortescue, and recorded in the court of common pleas in 1438 and 1400, but Secheville is not mentioned thereafter.