MUCHGODE, Robert

With no known link with Cricklade before 1449, Muchgode was probably an outsider to the borough he represented in the Commons and, as far as the very limited evidence goes, his interests lay outside Wiltshire. Two counties with which he was certainly associated were Worcestershire and Buckinghamshire. On 10 May 1452 the Crown granted the farm of the subsidy and alnage of cloth in Worcestershire and the city of Worcester to John Newton I*, for a term of seven years at £7 3s. 4d. p.a. Unfortunately for Newton, a merchant from Worcester, Muchgode was a competitor for the farm and just ten days later the Crown re-granted it to him on exactly the same terms. Newton regained it in the following month, having offered to pay the King £7 13s. 4d. p.a., but the persistent Muchgode won it back in October 1453. Again, he did not have to better Newton’s bid, for his new grant was also for the same farm of £7 13s. 4d. p.a. It is possible that Newton lost out because his rival was in some way linked to the Crown. If so, it might explain how Muchgode had secured his seat in Parliament a few years earlier, in spite of apparently lacking any links with Cricklade or with the wider county of Wiltshire.1 CFR, xviii. 244; xix. 62-63. In the same vein, it is worth noting that in January 1462 Muchgode was referred to in the patent rolls as a ‘gentleman’ and as ‘late of Denham’ in Buckinghamshire, a parish that – were he a royal servant – lay conveniently close to Windsor. This entry related to a suit for debt that he had brought at Westminster against Walter Kyngton, a yeoman from Uxbridge in Middlesex. Muchgode claimed that Kyngton owed him £20 but he had yet to recover this sum at his death, which probably happened in the following decade. Later, in November 1478, the yeoman received a pardon for not answering another suit over the same sum that Muchgode’s executors had brought against him. The executors were James Asshe and Cecily his wife, of whom the latter was perhaps previously married to the late MP.2 CPR, 1461-7, p. 5; 1476-85, p. 85. The records of the common pleas show that one John Muchgode also sued Kyngton for debt, in an action that reached pleadings in that court in Trin. term 1459. Presumably a relative of Robert, John also sued John Goode, another yeoman from Uxbridge, again for debt, in the same period. According to John Muchgode, the two debts (each for £7 6s. 8d.) arose from bonds that he had taken from Kyngton and Goode at London in Nov. 1458: CP40/794, rot. 165; 795, rot. 241d; 796, rot. 172d; 797, rot. 263; 798, rot. 214d; 799, rot. 478d; 800, rot. 199d. It has been speculated that Muchgode was the father of the Henry Muchgode† who sat for Heytesbury in the Parliament of 1467, but this is impossible to prove.3 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 617.