STOKES, Nicholas

An obscure figure, Stokes was an ‘esquire’ rather than a typical burgess and there is no evidence that he had a connexion with Worcester before representing it in Parliament. It seems that he was a man of military experience: in the autumn of 1426 and again a year later Nicholas Stokes of Worcestershire received letters of protection as a member of the retinue of John, duke of Bedford, Regent of France.2 DKR, xlviii. 244, 254. It is unlikely that he was the earl of Ormond’s servant of that name. This Nicholas, who was with Ormond in Ireland in early 1415, was among those who, later in Hen. V’s reign, was prosecuted for counterfeiting coinage. He turned approver and implicated others in the crime: C67/37, m. 59; KB9/212/2/23-24; E. Powell, Kingship, Law and Society, 260. Stokes disappears from view following his assessment for the subsidy on lands granted by the Parliament of 1431. An inquisition held by the subsidy commissioners for Worcestershire found that he and Robert Russell II* had possession of the manor of Huddington in that county. At one time the property of Thomas Hodyngton†, Russell had inherited a moiety of it through his mother Agnes, the elder of Hodyngton’s two daughters and coheirs. It may be that Stokes was then the husband of the younger daughter, Joan, recorded later as the wife of Roger Winter (to whose descendants her interest in the manor of Huddington were to pass).3 Feudal Aids, v. 332; VCH Worcs. iii. 409; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 386-7.