SHORDITCH, John

When the infant Henry VI came to the throne, the Shorditches, an upwardly mobile Middlesex family, already had traditions of parliamentary service stretching back several generations. The family’s fortunes were established in the reign of Edward II by two brothers, Sir John, a Crown servant and diplomat, who rose through the ranks of the royal administration to become keeper of the rolls of the King’s bench in 1323 and a baron of the Exchequer in 1336, only to be murdered by four of his own servants in 1345, and Nicholas (d.1358), who then inherited his brother’s property. Nicholas’s son, John, represented the shire of Middlesex in at least seven Parliaments between 1363 and 1390, and was followed into the Commons by his synonymous son, the father of the MP of 1426.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 369-71; Oxf. DNB, ‘Shoreditch, Sir John’.

The second John Shorditch died in 1407 in his own father’s lifetime, and could thus leave his young son his best chest for the storage of muniments, but no landed property that might have brought such documentation with it.6 Commissary ct. wills, 9171/2, f. 109d. The boy did, however, only have to wait for three further years for his grandfather to die. It is not certain whether he had already reached full age at this date, but he had evidently done so by 1412, when he was in possession of his mother’s inheritance at Chelsea.7 CP40/897, rot. 359; Genealogist, n.s. xxii. 32-33. The Shorditch lands which now came to his hands included the manor called ‘Le Grovehous’ and other holdings in Hackney, as well as the manors of Ickenham Hall and Southall, which Nicholas Shorditch had acquired by his marriage to a daughter of the London mercer John Charlton†,8 VCH Mdx. x. 81; CPR, 1343-5, pp. 458, 576; London Metropolitan Archs., St. Thomas’s Hosp. deeds, HI/ST/E67/1/115; Cambridge Univ. Lib., Ee.1.3, f. 269; CP25(1)/150/56/96; CCR, 1346-9, p. 596; Newcourt, i. 663. and were, both in 1412 and 1436, said to be worth some £40 p.a., most likely an underestimate.9 Feudal Aids, iii. 381; vi. 488, 489; Westminster Abbey muns. 445, 12356-7; St. Thomas’s Hosp. deeds, HI/ST/E67/1/141; E179/238/90, m. 1d.

In the first instance, Shorditch’s inheritance was diminished by the survival of his grandmother, and his reduced income may go some way to explain his apparent failure to play any part in public life for more than a decade after his grandfather’s death.10 Feudal Aids, vi. 488, 489. It is, indeed, possible that Shorditch was also encumbered with a surviving stepmother, for one Agatha, ‘former wife of John Shordych’ was alive in 1418: CP40/629, rot. 328d. It is, however, also possible that John had little personal inclination to participate in local government. He was to be appointed to royal commissions just twice; unlike his father and grandfather he did not sit on the county bench, he never served as sheriff or escheator, and in 1432 was able to fend off an attempt to have him elected a coroner by securing a royal writ declaring him insufficient for the post.11 CCR, 1429-35, p. 195. This was an evident calumny, for he was deemed of sufficient standing to be included among the Middlesex gentry required to take the general oath against maintenance in 1434, and he was distrained to take up knighthood in both 1430 and 1439.

Equally, and again in marked contrast to his grandfather, he only sat in the Commons once, and there may be some significance in the fact that the only Parliament he is known to have attended was that summoned to Leicester in 1426. It is possible that he had by this date been drawn into the wider circle of Cardinal Beaufort, at whose behest the Lords and Commons were summoned to the Midlands, for a few years later he found sureties for Lewis John*, a prominent member of Beaufort’s circle, in his acquisition of the wardship of one of the daughters and heirs of (Sir) Richard Hankford*.12 CPR, 1429-36, p. 261.

His avoidance of office apart, Shorditch took the place in the local community for which his wealth predestined him. He was an apparently regular attender at the shire court, and during the period of Henry VI’s minority frequently set his seal to the parliamentary election indentures sealed there. Equally, he appears to have been well regarded by his neighbours. Among the men who called upon him to attest their property deeds were royal officers, such as the under marshal and former clerk of the Commons Thomas Haseley†, and London merchants like John Gedney*,13 CCR, 1441-7, p. 308; 1447-54, pp. 134-5. while he possessed yet other connexions in London society through the marriages of his sisters Ivette and Alice to the grocer Thomas Virly (son of Thomas Girdler alias Virly†, a London Member of the ‘Wonderful Parliament’) and the haberdasher William Oliver.14 Corp. London RO, hr 179/32; C1/25/32-33; CCR, 1429-35, p. 355; 1435-41, p. 180; 1447-54, p. 120. Rather more obscure is Shorditch’s inclusion among the benefactors of the Cambridge college of Saints Margaret and Bernard (now Queen’s College) founded in 1448 by Henry VI’s consort, Margaret of Anjou. It is possible that he was persuaded to contribute to the project by courtly connexions among the Middlesex gentry, such as John Somerset* or Henry Somer*, who were also among the benefactors, but no conclusive evidence of this has come to light.15 Harl. 7048, f. 5.

Shorditch appears not to have been a litigious man, although he was not afraid to prosecute in the royal courts the kinds of petty transgressions with which any medieval landowner had to contend. Thus, in 1429 he sued a husbandman from Hackney for killing his dog, while in 1447 he appeared before the justices of King’s bench to charge two men for breaking and entering his house at Northcote.16 KB27/670, rot. 93; 746, rot. 10; KB29/62, rot. 2. Shorditch died in the course of 1452. He is last recorded in March of that year, when he presented a new vicar to the Essex parish church of North Ockenden, but he was dead by the following November, when his widow, Maud, did likewise at Ickenham.17 Newcourt, i. 663; ii. 447. Maud survived into the 1470s, having gone on to marry successively John Myrywether*, a serjeant of Henry VI’s scullery, and (by 1465) Richard Willy, a yeoman of the Crown to Edward IV.18 Ibid. i. 663; C140/17/31. Shorditch was succeeded by his son Robert, who served as clerk of Edward IV’s spicery, and eschaetor of Kent and Middlesex, and sat on the Middlesex bench from 1487 to 1505. In his father’s lifetime he successively married Alice, daughter of the London recorder Thomas Burgoyne* and Margaret, daughter of Queen Margaret of Anjou’s attorney-general, Robert Tanfeld* of Gayton. Within weeks of his father’s death, Robert was forced to defend his title to the family lands at Chelsea and Hackney against Burgoyne.19 C67/49, m. 1; 51, m. 18; 53, m. 10; C1/22/105A; C4/49/30; E101/412/10, f. 5; 412/13, m. 3; CPR, 1485-94, p. 493; 1494-1509, p. 650. It is possible that following Richard III’s accession – and unlike many other former servants of Edward IV’s household – Robert transferred his allegiance to the usurper, for within a few months of the battle of Bosworth he was forced to sell his manor of Chelsea to the duchess of Norfolk, the ultimate beneficiary being Henry VII’s trusted servant, Reynold Bray†.20 CP40/897, rots. 355, cart. 1; M. Condon, ‘Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office’, Profit, Piety and the Professions ed. Hicks, 140-1.