WODEHOUSE, John

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 885-7.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century Wodehouse held a couple of important offices in the household of Henry, prince of Wales, not noticed in the previous biography, namely those of Henry’s chamberlain and keeper of his secret treasury. In the same period, he was chamberlain of Chester, again by appointment of the prince, in his capacity as earl of Chester.

Wodehouse was in receipt of his annuity from the Earl Marshal, John Mowbray, by 1414, eight years earlier than the date previously noted. R.E. Archer, ‘The Mowbrays’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1984), 345.

In or shortly before 1415, Wodehouse and John Dalton, clerk, acquired a manor at Bayford in Hertfordshire from the London grocer, Robert Wydyton, although their right to the property was soon disputed. During the late fourteenth century the manor had come into the hands of Peter de St. Paul, a foreign servant of Richard II’s second wife Isabella of France, but St. Paul had never taken out letters of denization, meaning that technically it had become forfeit to the Crown. In 1415 Wodehouse and Dalton took out a royal pardon for having themselves acquired Bayford without the King’s licence, but in about 1417 they were dispossessed on account of St. Paul’s forfeiture and Henry V granted its keeping to John Santon. Wodehouse and his associate appealed and the manor was restored to them in 1426. Dalton’s background is not known but he was evidently the cleric of that name whom the MP appointed a supervisor of his will and to whom he bequeathed a silver cup and psalter. It is not clear whether Wodehouse still had an interest in Bayford at his death. By 1439 it was held by John Tewkesbury, a London goldsmith, in the right of his wife Agnes, and shortly afterwards it was purchased by (Sir) John Fortescue*. VCH Herts. iii. 422; E159/202, brevia Easter rot. 8; Reg. Chichele, ii. 438-9.

Among those associated with Wodehouse, while he was engaged in his duties as an executor of Henry V in late 1423, was Robert Wodehouse. E403/663, m. 4. Evidently Robert was a relative but the exact relationship between him and the MP is not known.

The wealthy Wodehouse continued to make loans to the Crown late in his career, since he was among those from north-west and west Norfolk who lent the King a total of over £300 in the spring of 1430. E403/695, mm. 2, 19. Six years later, one of Wodehouse’s executors, the clerk John Scot, was assessed for the subsidy of 1436, as ‘tenant’ of lands that the late MP had held in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk. For the purposes of this tax, these holdings were valued at only £53 p.a., a considerable underestimate if they represented all of Wodehouse’s estates in those counties, including as they did no fewer than 18 manors and his magnificent manor-house at Roydon. E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (ii).