SELWOOD, John

It is possible that Selwood was the ‘John Selewock’ of Marlborough who was party to a conveyance of March 1399, by which Robert Duraunt transferred a couple of tenements in Kingsbury Street in that town to Selewock and his wife Marion. Over three decades later, on 28 Feb. 1431, John Selwood the younger of Marlborough quitclaimed a tenement in the same street (almost certainly one of the properties of the earlier conveyance) to an elder namesake from the town, perhaps the John Selewock of 1399.2 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Savernake Estate mss, 9/19/269-70. It seems likely that the MP was one of the Johns involved in this quitclaim, and that he resided at Marlborough, giving him an immediate connexion with the borough he represented in 1429. As for Cricklade, it is unclear whether he had any links with that town prior to his election to the Parliament of 1431, which was sitting when the quitclaim between the two Selwoods occurred.

Within a fortnight of the same quitclaim, John ‘Schwode’ and Agnes his wife conveyed the tenement to Thomas West of Avebury and his wife Joan. Evidently, Schwode was a misspelling or variant of Selwood, for attached to the deed of conveyance was the seal of John ‘Selwode’.3 Ibid. 9/19/271. Heading the list of witnesses to the deed was the lord of Marlborough, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Earlier, in the spring of 1425, the duke had sued John Selwood of Marlborough in the court of common pleas at Westminster, demanding that the latter should account for his time as bailiff and receiver of the ducal manor of ‘Salley’, Wiltshire (possibly Soley in the east of the county). In the same period William Darell* pursued another action against Selwood in the same court, over an alleged debt of £10. Both lawsuits reveal the defendant’s occupation, referring to him as a ‘plommer’, that is someone who dealt with or traded in lead.4 CP40/657, rots. 18, 186; 658, rot. 156d. It is not known whether Gloucester had resolved his differences with his former bailiff when the conveyance to the Wests occurred, and one cannot attach any significance to his witnessing of the deed of conveyance since this was pro forma, arising from his lordship of Marlborough.

In July 1442, over 11 years after the MP’s last Parliament, the Exchequer received an order to pay £240 to two ‘gentlemen’, John Stratton and an unknown John Selwood, for the ordnance they had supplied to the Crown, possibly in connexion with the fortification of Calais.5 E404/58/172; PPC, v. 258-9. Later, in 1479, a John Selwood of Wiltshire served on the jury summoned to Salisbury for the inquisition post mortem of John Hall II* and witnessed a deed relating to the manor of Ugford St. James near Wilton. While it is very unlikely that he was the MP, there is a good chance that he was a relative.6 C140/70/33; Wilts. Hist. Centre, Misc. deeds 492/218.