CRICKLADE, William

The most obscure of the four members of the Cricklade family who between them secured no fewer than 11 of Calne’s parliamentary seats between 1426 and 1442 (as well as eight of those for Cricklade between 1413 and 1433), William may have been a younger son or brother of the landowner Thomas Cricklade. Few details of his career have come to light, but like several of his kinsmen he may have received some training in the law, and is occasionally encountered as an attorney in the court of common pleas.1 CP40/698, rots. 257, 264d; 700, rot. 331. Along with his putative father and brother Robert, in 1434 William was named among those members of the Wiltshire gentry required to take the general oath against maintenance.2 CPR, 1429-36, p. 371. He is not heard of after the mid 1430s, and may have died about that time, leaving no surviving offspring, since he played no part in the protracted struggle between his putative brother John and his nephew for control of the family estates.