MUDGE, Geoffrey, of Guildford, Surr.

The Geoffrey Mudge who, in August 1397, was given custody for life with John Brace of certain property in Worcester and elsewhere in Worcestershire may well have sat as MP for Guildford in later life. According to this royal grant he was then a yeoman in the service of Thomas Holand, earl of Kent; and the latter is known to have had dealings with a number of local landowners. In July 1406, described as ‘of Surrey, esquire’, Mudge stood surety at the Exchequer for Henry Bowet, bishop of Bath and Wells, and Thomas Bowet the elder as farmers of the late Robert Pervyng’s estates. In the following year, however, a Geoffrey Mudge ‘in the county of Devon’ was named among the mainpernors of the bishop’s brother, John, and the other farmers of the temporalities of the archbishopric of York, which in due course were to be conferred on Henry following his enthronement as archbishop.CPR, 1396-9, p. 190; 1405-8, pp. 137, 226; CFR, xii. 313. It is just possible that Mudge had property in both parts of England, in which case he may have been either the son or grandson of the Geoffrey Mudge senior who was assessed for taxation in 1373 as a resident of Harberton in Devon. He may, too, have obtained custody, in 1421, of the manor of Milton Damerel in that county during the minority of Philip Courtenay, but this cannot be proved.E179/95/33; CFR, xiv. 384. More conclusive evidence serves to confirm his standing in the county of Surrey, which was such as to merit his participation in the county election to the Parliament of 1422, and which secured him a term in office as mayor of Guildford four years later. He and his wife, Joan, eventually settled in or near the borough, for in 1431 they conveyed a messuage and a small plot of land there to Thomas Cattesland.C219/13/1; CP25(1)232/71/48.