RUSSELL, John I

There is additional evidence to support the surmise in the earlier biography that John Russell was the illegitimate son of Sir John Russell, master of Richard II’s horse in the 1390s. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 246-8. As mentioned there he was one of the knight’s executors and a remainder-man, at a distance to imply illegitimacy, in a settlement of part of a manor in which Sir John had an interest. Further, in the contract made in 1406 for the marriage of Sir John’s son and heir, William, to Agnes, daughter of another of Sir John’s executors, Thomas Hodyngton† of Huddington, Worcestershire, he was among those entrusted with the task of persuading the knight’s widow to lease her jointure to the heir. Warws. RO, Throckmorton mss, CR1998/MM3/4. Such evidence cannot be entirely compelling, but the pattern of John Russell’s career, with its early prominence, certainly suggests that he was well born.

Another uncertainty about Russell is the means by which he came to settle in Herefordshire. The explanation may lie in friendships established as a lawyer at Westminster with a group of Herefordshire practitioners then active there. Early in his career he acted in loco parentis for the daughter of one of these lawyers: on 25 Mar. 1403 he sealed a contract with John Cook of Horndon in distant Essex concerning the terms on which Cook’s son, another John, was to marry Cecily, daughter of Richard Nash† (d.1394/5) of Hereford, formerly justiciar of South Wales. Hereford Cathedral Archs., 3219. But, by whatever route he came into the county, marriage to a widow was the means by which he acquired his initial landed stake there. His wife brought an interest in property at Burton and Eardisland, from her first marriage to John St. Audeon, and at Lingen and Aymestrey, from her second to Richard Lingen. Their own marriage had been made by March 1412, when they leased lands in Burton and Eardisland to John Merbury* for term of Isabel’s life at an annual rent of £8. CIPM, xxii. 510; Feudal Aids, iv. 249; Herefs. RO, Sir Thomas Phillipps mss, AH81/3; CCR, 1402-5, p. 328; 1405-9, p. 310; CFR, xiii. 78.

As a supplement to his wife’s dower and jointure lands, Russell, like most successful lawyers, resorted to purchase. His main acquisition was the manor of Sutton Overcourt, a few miles north of Hereford: by a final concord levied in Michaelmas term 1407, as his legal career was beginning to flourish and probably at about the time he married, he undertook to pay an annual rent of 25 marks to Richard Mawarden† and Mawarden’s wife, Edith, for the term of their lives, together, presumably, with a capital payment, for an inheritable estate in this manor and other surrounding property. CP25(1)/83/51/18. Armed with these lands, Russell quickly became an important figure in his adoptive county, seemingly as much through natural ability as employment by Mortimer, Stafford and other of the marcher aristocracy. In addition to the connexions mentioned in the earlier biography, he had an annuity of 40s. from Gilbert, Lord Talbot (d.1418): CIPM, xxi. 320. He also attracted the lesser patronage of local knights: on 20 May 1410 Sir John Chandos† granted him a life annuity of 40s., and on 13 Sept. 1411 he was granted a fee of two marks p.a. by Sir Thomas de la Barre†. CIPM, xxi. 498; xxiii. 716.

His rise did not, however, go without provoking some local hostility. He became involved in a long-running quarrel with a local gentleman, Thomas Everard of Lucton. On 31 July 1411, if an indictment taken before Russell himself on the following 5 Oct. is to be credited, Everard, at the head of 40 men, assaulted and wounded him in the market place at Leominster. Perhaps Russell, then in office as both escheator and j.p., had incurred Everard’s enmity in connexion with his official duties. KB27/605, rex rot. 15. Another possibility is that Everard was the disinherited heir of Richard Mawarden: in 1438 our MP’s widow sued Everard, described as ‘of Marden’, neighbouring Sutton Overcourt, for depasturing at ‘Fen’, part of the property her late husband had purchased from Mawarden: KB27/705, rot. 74. However this may be, the violence was not all on one side: Everard brought an appeal of mayhem against Russell, described as ‘man of lawe’, his putative legitimate brother, John, and others, and when the indictment of 1411 was called into King’s bench, Everard pleaded self-defence. KB27/605, rex rot. 15; 617, rot. 13; 626, rot. 28; 654, rex rot. 16. Russell may have been guilty here of using his influence as a j.p. to secure a false or coloured indictment against a rival. Nor was his professional conduct always above reproach in other respects, or, to put it more mildly, he attracted at least one of the complaints not uncommonly made against lawyers. In Easter term 1427 a London jeweller, Joan Cook, laid a plea of fraud against him, alleging that, after she had retained him of counsel and delivered her seal to him for safe-keeping, he had fraudulently used it to seal three bonds binding her to him in the large sum of £240. She laid the same complaint before the chancellor, but in terms that suggest her claim was an elaborate means of avoiding her own obligations. CP40/625, rot. 327; C1/16/45.

At the height of his career, Russell was one of the main workhorses of the duchy of Lancaster estates in Wales, and his industry is particularly apparent in his efforts to mobilize the resources of those estates in support of Henry V’s ambitions in France. In the early summer of 1417, for example, he spent 39 days travelling between London, Reading, Brecon, Hereford, Southampton and Titchfield, in the raising and payment of a large subsidy he and others had negotiated with the duchy’s Welsh tenants. On 12 Dec. 1420, while he was sitting as an MP, the receiver of Kidwelly was ordered to pay him nearly £30 in expenses and reward. In January 1421 he was again engaged, in company with Sir John Ogan and John Merbury, in raising men and money, and in the following May he himself made a loan of £40. DL42/17, ff. 126, 238v-9; E401/696, 13 May. His support for the war was probably confined to such efforts, and it is unlikely that he is to be identified with the namesake who undertook to serve in 1415 in the retinue of the Herefs. knight, Sir Roland Lenthall, and in 1417 in that of Richard, Lord Beauchamp of Abergavenny: E101/45/18, m. 5; 51/2, m. 5. In the later part of Russell’s career, there is a mysterious episode. In Easter term 1428 he and a gentleman of Ringwood (Hampshire), John Laurence, were sued by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, for the theft of goods worth as much as £1,000 from Marlborough, where the duke was lord. CP40/669, rot. 47. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to give this surprising offence a context.

Russell probably died in March 1437. On 22 Mar. he was commissioned to deliver the gaol of Worcester castle; three days later his widow made a vow of perpetual chastity in Hereford cathedral. C66/440, m. 43d; Reg. Spofford (Canterbury and York Soc. xxiii), 219. She was alive in 1440: CP40/717, rot. 75d. There is every reason to suppose that he died without issue. A dispute in the 1450s between Thomas Fitzharry* and John Lingen, concerning, among other things, Russell’s manor of Sutton Overcourt, suggests that the manor had been purchased by Lingen’s father, Ralph (d.1453). The other possibility, namely that Ralph Lingen’s wife, Joan, was our MP’s da. and h., can be discounted. Ralph’s inq. post mortem identifies his wife and widow as a da. of Sir Laurence Merbury: C139/149/21. Other of Russell’s lands went to the foundation of a chantry in Hereford cathedral. Shortly before his death, he conveyed his property in Mordiford and Fownhope, a few miles south-east of the city, to a group of feoffees, headed by Sir John Barre* and Thomas Bromwich*, and including Ralph Lingen, with the intent that they apply the issues to the maintenance of a chantry dedicated to St. George. Herefs. RO, LC deeds, 9132/136.