WOOD, Richard I

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 894.

The north-west Devon landowner with whom the Barnstaple MP must probably be identified, appears to have been a quarrelsome man, who was frequently in dispute with his lesser neighbours. Probably about the time of Wood’s two returns to Parliament, the chancellor was presented with a whole catalogue of offences that he was said to have committed against a group of men and women from the vills of Dexbeer, Hamsworthy and Youlden in Pancrasweek and Soldon in Holsworthy. He was said to have assaulted and imprisoned them, extorted fines for their release, and to have brutally beaten one Thomas Glanvyle in the parish church of Sutcombe, an offence which resulted in an episcopal enquiry into the purported pollution of the churchyard there in June 1417. Perhaps most damagingly, Richard was accused of having embezzled the proceeds of the duchy of Lancaster’s court of fees. It is at least possible that he was motivated to seek election to the Commons by the legal proceedings against him. C1/75/69. The date of Wood’s purported offences cannot be established with absolute certainty, as the Chancery petition only stipulates ‘the 4th [and 5th] year of the present king’, and the chancellor’s see or title is not provided. It is however likely that the petition dated from the reign of Henry V, as Nicholas Aysshton* and John Cork*, then both at the beginning of their legal careers, stood surety for the prosecution.

Equally poor were Wood’s relations with his son and heir, Robert, whom he regarded as ‘of frail and unthrifty disposition’. To prevent his son from selling off the family estates (encompassing over 400 acres in East Lovelake in West Putford, Kimworthy and Bradworthy in Bradworthy, Hamsworthy, Youlden and Hudson in Pancrasweek, Northcott in Sutcombe and Tilleslow in Virginstow), he settled them on a panel of feoffees, headed by the prominent lawyer John Wydeslade*, with instructions to retain them during Robert’s lifetime. C1/54/128; 163/74. In the event, the lands were not restored to Wood’s heirs for many years: in the early sixteenth century his great-grand-daughter Joan, the wife of Robert Shilston, was still seeking their return from Wydeslade’s grandson, William. C1/163/74. Neither Wood’s son or grandson are known to have entered the Commons, but both Joan Shilston’s younger son, Sir John†, and her second husband, William Trewynnard†, sat in Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII. The Commons 1509-58, iii. 314, 485.