MARSHALL, John II, of Devon.

Marshall may have come from the family which held lands in Sidmouth from the 13th to the 16th centuries, and is perhaps to be identified with the man who in the 1390s was a party to a plea of novel disseisin concerning property there.Trans. Devon Assoc. lxxii. 285, 295; CCR, 1389-92, pp. 377, 449; 1392-6, p. 63. Either he or another John Marshall purchased a messuage in Plympton Erle in 1417: CP25(1)45/77/53. He acted as an attorney at the Exeter assizes in Henry IV’s reign, and seems to have had a higher standing among the gentry of Devonshire than the sparse surviving evidence about him reveals. Certainly, he attended the parliamentary elections held at Exeter castle on as many as eight occasions between 1413 and 1425, and in 1421 he provided securities for the appearance at Westminster of the knights of the shire, Sir Hugh Courtenay and Robert Cary. Then, too, he served Sir John Dynham (d.1428) of Hartland as steward of his estates in the year before his death, if not before. Referred to in 1429 as John Marshall ‘senior’, he, together with his wife and John ‘junior’ (perhaps his son), were then alleged at the assizes to be illegally occupying land at Budleigh. It is uncertain whether it was the elder or the younger John who, in 1434 and in company with other members of the local gentry, was listed among those liable to take the oath to refrain from maintaining breakers of the King’s peace,JUST 1/1513 m. 60, 1540 m. 66; C219/11/1, 12/3-6, 13/1-3; Reg. Lacy ed. Hingeston-Randolph, i. 104; CPR, 1429-36, p. 399. and who previously, in 1431, and later, in 1437, served as a collector of parliamentary subsidies in the shire.