WOODFORD, John

The MP may have been the man of this name who in April 1418 witnessed a deed of Robert More† and his wife Joan in the manor-house that Joan had inherited at Britford in south-east Wiltshire. Hants RO, Jervoise of Herriard mss, 44M69/C/747. From Michaelmas 1425 he was employed by both Henry IV’s queen Joan of Navarre and Glastonbury abbey as bailiff of their liberties in the county, but a year later he failed to render sufficient account of sums due to the King from the liberties, and was imprisoned in the Fleet and fined for contempt before being released on 29 Oct. 1426. E368/199, recorda Mich. rot. 7. Clearly well regarded by the burgesses of Marlborough, who elected him to three Parliaments, Woodford probably held an otherwise undocumented position of authority in the town. How long he served as deputy to Nicholas Poyntz*, the receiver of the earl of Stafford’s estates in the county, is not known. While holding that office he came forward at the county court to stand surety for the appearance of John Pole* as one of Marlborough’s MPs in the Parliament summoned to assemble in January 1442. C219/15/2. Pole’s fellow MP, the lawyer Philip Morgan*, was among the royal commissioners appointed in May 1443 to inquire into wastes on the estates of Clatford priory and found at an inquest held at Salisbury on 1 Oct. following that Woodford had taken a stone, worth 40d., fixed for an altar in the chapel at Clatford, and carried it off to nearby Marlborough, but his motive for doing so is not stated. CIMisc. viii. 174.