PEDWARDINE, John

Besides his election to Parliament for an impoverished Dorset borough, only one reference to John Pedwardine has been traced. In 1446 he brought actions of debt against several local men, including a clerk of Puddletown against whom he claimed as much as 40 marks. Among the other defendant were two dyers, and it is a fair inference that our MP had commercial interests in the neighbourhood of the borough he represented.1 CP40/743, rot. 223. He is, however, at least in origin, unlikely to have been a Dorset man. His surname was an unusual one, and there is every reason to suppose that he was a younger son, or else the representative of a junior branch, of the knightly family long settled at Burton Pedwardine in Lincolnshire. If a younger son, it is probable that his father was Walter Pedwardine, who predeceased his own father, Sir Robert (d.1432), and the brother of Roger Pedwardine (b.c.1408), sheriff of Lincolnshire at the time John sat in Parliament. This family, besides its principal properties in the Midlands, also held land in the south-east, namely the manor of South Warnborough in Hampshire, but Robert sold this four years before John was elected.2 CIPM, xxiii. 436-8, 633-4; CPR, 1436-41, p. 223; CCR, 1435-41, p. 436. John’s obscurity makes it impossible positively to explain his return. The proximity of Burton Pedwardine to the castle of Folkingham, the main residence of John, Viscount Beaumont, suggests the possibility that he was elected as a servant of the newly-created viscount.