LONGRIDGE, Roger.

Comparatively little is known about this obscure figure, who first appears at Westminster in June 1376, when he witnessed a conveyance of the Staffordshire manor of Penkridge (which lies near Longridge, where he probably lived). He witnessed another deed, this time for Sir Adam Peshale, at Weston-under-Lizard in the following year, and two more for members of the Swynnerton family in March 1384 and September 1389 respectively.Ibid. n.s. ii. 66; CCR, 1374-7, p. 367; Wm. Salt Lib. Stafford, D1790/A/3/76, 6/3. Longridge seems to have been a retainer of Hugh, earl of Stafford, whose feoffees were still paying him an annuity of 60s. in 1395, almost ten years after the earl’s death.Staffs. RO, D641/1/2/36. Meanwhile, in 1392 Longridge and Giles de la Hyde began a lawsuit against a group of local men for breaking into their close at Oaken near Wolverhampton and felling timber. Longridge attended the Stafford assizes in July 1393 as a plaintiff, claiming that James Morton and Ralph Stafford had disseised him of certain (unspecified) property. The action was still in progress two years later, although there is no means of telling if it was collusive. He was himself summoned to appear in court as a defendant during the Easter term of 1398, being accused, with his wife, of the illegal retention of certain documents claimed by John and Elizabeth Foucher.JUST 1/1504 mm. 96, 98d; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xv. 49, 86. Previously, in the spring of 1397, Longridge had joined with John Colclough and Nicholas Bradshaw, the earl of Stafford’s receiver-general, in acquiring certain land in the Staffordshire villages of Walton near Stone and Great Chatwell. This was to form part of an endowment upon Stone priory, although Longridge’s name does not figure in the conveyance of February 1402 by which this grant was effected, so he may perhaps have died by then. He is last mentioned in February 1399, when he served on the jury at the inquisition post mortem held on the Staffordshire estates of William, late earl of Stafford.Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 203; CPR, 1401-5, p. 47; C136/107.