RUDING, William

Ruding was from an established Warwick family. His putative father and namesake, a servant of the Beauchamp lords of Warwick, had represented the borough in Parliament in 1399. He made his own career as a Chancery clerk, probably finding his place there through the Warwickshire esquire, Thomas Bate*, brother of another Chancery man, John Bate, dean of Tamworth (Staffordshire) and a kinsman of John Kemp, cardinal-archbishop of York (chancellor from 1426 to 1432). It is significant in this context that Thomas was elected to represent Warwickshire in the Parliament in which Ruding sat for the county’s borough. On 1 Mar. 1442, while this Parliament was in session, Ruding was nominated by the Crown to receive the pension that the priory of Trentham in Staffordshire was bound to pay one of the King’s clerks until the prior should have provide the clerk with a benefice.2 Ibid.; C219/15/2. He was probably quite a young man at this date and it is likely that he died young. Only three further references to him have been found. In Hilary term 1443 he acted as attorney in a Chancery plea for William Thurston, a servant of Dean Bate; and on 14 July 1444, as ‘of Warwick, gentleman’, he offered mainprise at the Exchequer in a minor lease made to William Beaufitz*, a royal servant.3 KB27/727, rot. 81; CFR, xvii. 294-5. He last appears in the records in 1446 when listed among the members of the confraternity of St. Thomas in Rome, perhaps because he had made a pilgrimage there.4 J. Allen, English Hospice in Rome, 75.