The evidence of a 17th-century rhyming pedigree of the Wodehouse family, endowing John Wodehouse with a distinguished Norfolk ancestry, has been proved to be as fictitious as the Jacobean legend of his valourous conduct at the battle of Agincourt.
When Henry of Monmouth succeeded to the throne he promptly appointed his trusted retainer Wodehouse as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and an ex officio member of the duchy council at an annual fee of £40, and it was while occupying this important position that he sat in at least five more Parliaments. Subsequently, he was also given the stewardship of the duchy estates in East Anglia. Yet more royal favours followed. From June to September 1413 Wodehouse shared the guardianship of the temporalities of the bishopric of Norwich. In July that same year he alone was granted the estates of the alien priory of Panfield, Essex, together with its cell at Well Hall near Lynn, with special licence to negotiate for their outright purchase from Caen abbey; furthermore, in June 1415, following the confiscation of the non-conventual alien priories, Henry V was to grant the Panfield priory estates to him to hold of the Crown at a quit rent of a rose and free from all clerical and parliamentary taxation. In July 1415 he was appointed as royal chamberlain of the Exchequer for life, with a fee of 8d. per day.
Despite his preoccupation with the running of the duchy of Lancaster and the Exchequer, Wodehouse was included on a number of local commissions in East Anglia, and in June 1418 he received a special reward for riding into Wales with Judge Hill to conduct an inquiry into recent insurrections in the principality. At the Exchequer he was well placed to secure lucrative perquisites: in 1417 he secured shares in the wardships and marriages of the heirs to the families of Fouleshurst, Peyton and Tuddenham, and promptly married off the last of these, Thomas Tuddenham† of Eriswell, to Alice, one of his own daughters.
Following the death of Henry of Monmouth, whom he had loyally and conscientiously served for over 20 years, Wodehouse secured election for Suffolk to the Parliament of 1422. As the late King’s feoffee and executor, it was a direct concern of his that Parliament should authorize provisions for the administration of Henry’s will, while as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster he was still interested in the de Bohun partition, which was to come up before Parliament for final settlement. The problems relating to Henry V’s affairs were to take up much of his time over the next few years, and although he retained his chamberlainship of the Exchequer and the sinecure posts at Castle Rising for the rest of his life, he resigned from the chancellorship of the duchy in 1424 and from the stewardship of the duchy estates in East Anglia a year later (relinquishing the latter office in favour of his son-in-law, Tuddenham).
Wodehouse’s influential position led to his frequently being asked to act as a feoffee-to-uses of estates in East Anglia; his private and official acquaintance was considerable. Among those for whom he undertook trusteeships were Sir Simon Felbrigg KG, Sir John Colville, Sir William Phelip and John Lancaster II. William Kinwolmarsh (d.1421/2), the treasurer of the Exchequer, named him as an executor of his will and left him a silver drinking cup which had once belonged to Henry V’s grandmother, Joan, countess of Hereford. The dignitaries of the region were wont to do him favours: Bishop Wakering of Norwich conferred on him and his dependant, Robert Holley, the keepership of North Elmham park, and by 1422 he was in receipt of an annuity of ten marks charged on the issues of the lordship of Hanworth, Norfolk, by grant of John Mowbray, the Earl Marshal. No doubt tasks performed as steward of the liberties of Bury St. Edmunds abbey and as proxy for the abbot in the Parliament of 1423 also went well rewarded. Furthermore, every year from 1418 to 1427 the city of Norwich gave him a fee of five marks.
Made rich from the many fees and annuities he accumulated over the years, Wodehouse had invested in no fewer than 18 manors (two in Cambridgeshire, four in Suffolk and the remainder in Norfolk, clustered for the most part around Castle Rising). He had bought a ‘mansion’ in Norwich, and at Roydon he was reputed to have spent more than 2,000 marks in constructing a manor-house described later as ‘sumptuose edificatum in magna quantitate et spacio cum domibus officinis’. These properties were to be shared out after his death between his five sons, in accordance with the terms of the will he made on 15 Jan. 1431. Bequests of livestock, in which no fewer than 2,000 sheep, not to mention lambs and hoggets, were enumerated, reveal the testator’s interest in the wool trade, an interest confirmed by the presence of Henry Barton, the London skinner, and William Estfield†, the merchant stapler, among his executors. Wodehouse’s conciliar and official connexions were represented in the overseers of the will’s administration, who included William Alnwick, bishop of Norwich (the keeper of the privy seal)—to whom he bequeathed a gold plaque of the Trinity given him by Bishop Wakering—the Lords Hungerford (then treasurer) and Cromwell, and Nicholas Dixon (the under treasurer). To Hungerford he left a brooch with two great pearls, and to Cromwell a valuable pendant containing relics, which the testator always wore around his neck. To his eldest son, Henry, then in Bishop Alnwick’s service, he left a large gold seal decorated with pearls and other precious stones, and his five daughters were to split up between them the coral rosary given him by Queen Katherine. To each of his three unmarried daughters he left a dowry of 200 marks. Wodehouse died a few days later, on 27 Jan., and probate was granted on 2 Mar. He was buried in the chantry he had founded in Norwich cathedral. Wodehouse’s widow married Edmund Wynter of Barningham (son of his one-time colleague), and lived on until 1448. The impressive manor-house at Roydon, symbol of his spectacular rise to wealth and prominence, was to be razed to the ground six years later by order of his son Henry’s patron, Thomas, Lord Scales.