WOOD, Christopher

It has been suggested, without any supporting documentation, that Christopher was the son of John Wood V*, who represented Melcombe Regis in 1442, HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 964. but nothing is known for certain about his family background. First recorded in Michaelmas term 1450, he was then described as a gentleman ‘late of the parish of St. Clement Danes, London’, and accused with others of close-breaking in Knightsbridge. CP40/759, rot. 449; 760, rots. 113, 386. Probably already a member of Clement’s Inn, five years later he was retained as counsel in the sheriffs’ court in the City, as ‘in lege terre peritus’. KB27/782, rot. 53d; 787, rot. 76. Whether or not a native of Dorset, that same year (1455), Wood and his wife Alice brought an action for trespass against their neighbours Edward Bishop and his wife, whom they accused together with Robert Wotton* from Faulstone (Wiltshire) of unlawfully entering their property at Hampreston in the east of the county. CP40/779, rots. 52d, 256d. The property concerned may have been inherited by Alice, who was evidently a landowner in her own right for after her death (which occurred at an unknown date before 13 Nov. 1472), the Crown instituted inquiries about her estate. CFR, xxi. no. 99. No inq. post mortem survives. Wood had continued to be sometimes resident in the capital, for it was as ‘of London, gentleman’ that he sued out a pardon in April that year. C67/49, m. 27.

Hampreston is located on the banks of the river Stour to the south-east of Wimborne and at some distance from Shaftesbury, the borough which Wood represented in the Parliament of 1460. An explanation for his election may be found in his profession, for he was one of several MPs for Shaftesbury in this period who had been trained in the law. Yet more importance should be attached to his close links to one of the knights of the shire returned to the same Parliament – the prominent Dorset lawyer John Newburgh II* – especially as four other of Newburgh’s acolytes joined them in the Commons as representatives of Dorset boroughs. That Newburgh and Wood were well known to each other is revealed from judicial proceedings following the murder in Hertfordshire on 9 Jan. 1462 of William Bastard*, one of the filacers in King’s bench. Bastard’s widow appealed his assailants, naming her kinsman Thomas Thornbury as a principal in the affair and Newburgh and Wood among the accessories to the felony. In Easter term 1463 Wood was the only one of those appealed to come to King’s bench to answer, and he pleaded not guilty; in Michaelmas term he was dismissed to the bail of John Wyke II*, another of Newburgh’s close associates. KB27/799, rex rot. 4; 808, rot. 84. At an unknown date Thornbury, outlawed that same year, had enfeoffed Newburgh and Wood, among others, of the manor of Whitelackington in Somerset, which had been settled on him in tail-male by Sir Thomas Beauchamp* (d.1444). Beauchamp’s intention had been to disinherit his grand-daughter and heiress, Alice, and it was against her and her second husband, Henry Hull*, that Thornbury’s feoffees instigated legal action over possession of the manor. After Thornbury’s death the feoffees, with the exception of Wood (who allegedly refused to do so) relinquished their title to the manor to his brother and heir, John. CP40/810, rot. 312; CIPM, xxvi. 218; C1/61/102. Meanwhile, process over the appeal by Bastard’s widow had continued in Hilary term 1465, when another of those appealed as accessory to the murder, namely Richard Saunder alias Bolton, was brought to the bar. Wood and Newburgh offered surety for Saunder’s appearance at a later date. KB27/808, rot. 84.

Wood clearly continued to belong to Newburgh’s intimate circle, for Newburgh engaged his services in 1467 to finalize a marriage settlement for one of his daughters, and in 1478 to help safeguard the interests of his grandson and heir. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 441-2; Add. Chs. 18251-2, 18254; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 38. As a feoffee of the Newburgh estates, in 1481 Wood made grants of land in Wiltshire to Robert and Katherine Andrew, Add. Chs. 28918, 28919. and in 1488 (four years after the shire-knight’s death), he joined the other surviving feoffees in purchasing royal pardons, intended to cover any transgressions they had committed. C67/54, m. 3.