WILFORD, John

The Wilfords were a well-established Nottingham family, presumably originating from the nearby vill of Wilford.4 The ped. of the Wilfords is complex. The MP was clearly related to, but is to be distinguished from, namesakes of Babraham (Cambs.) and Exeter. For the Wilfords of Babraham, who failed in the male line in about 1465: CIPM, xxv. 351; C67/45, m. 17; C1/27/185; 28/389; 29/231-2; 69/353. A single reference implies a kinship between the Nottingham and Exeter Wilfords. On 5 June 1414 John Wilford† of Exeter granted the Alestres, a wealthy family of Nottingham merchants, a messuage in Long Row in a deed witnessed by Henry Wilford: ct. rolls CA1308, rot. 18d. One Brian de Wilford witnessed a borough charter as early as 1311; and Richard Wilford† twice represented the borough in Parliament in the early 1380s. Our MP was the son of Henry Wilford, who was perhaps Richard’s brother. Henry, an ironmonger, had a long career in the town’s administration: both chamberlain and bailiff early in Richard II’s reign, he was mayor in 1398 and, after a violently disputed election, in 1412.5 Nottingham Recs. ed Stevenson, i. 377, 426; CAD, vi. C5265; J.A. Mills, ‘Admin. of Nottingham’ (Nottingham Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2010), 166, 248-53; CIMisc. vii. 469. By his death in 1419, our MP was already well established. As early as 1403 he had joined with his father in making a grant of three cottages in Long Row; and in 1409 he had been elected the borough chamberlain.6 Nottingham ct. rolls CA1300, rot. 26; Nottingham Recs. ii. 427. Later, in the autumn of 1412 he was arrested by the town bailiffs to answer one of the town’s important neighbours, Sir Nicholas Strelley† on a plea of debt; and he was then named on a panel for the town jury to sit before royal commissioners of inquiry on 1 June 1414.7 E13/128, rot. 6d; KB9/204/2/21. When his father drew up his will on 31 Aug. 1419, our MP already had a son, another John, old enough to be named with him as co-executor, but 12 days later probate was granted to him alone.8 Abps. Regs. 18 (Bowet), f. 371d.

After his father’s death, Wilford had a brief period of prominence. He was returned by the electors of Nottingham to successive Parliaments in September 1423 and April 1425.9 Nottingham ct. rolls CA1315, rot.3d; C219/13/2, 3. Yet thereafter he makes only very intermittent appearances in the records, and he did not hold borough office after the term as chamberlain that he had served in his father’s lifetime. Little is known of his connexions with the other prominent men of Nottingham, beyond some routine litigation. In 1430, for example, he appeared personally in the court of common pleas to sue John Squyer* for a debt of £10, and was himself sued in the borough court by Geoffrey Kniveton* for taking a ‘trendell de brasse’ worth 6s. 8d.10 Nottingham ct. rolls CA1321/II, rot. 14; CP40/677, rot. 161d. More interesting is the litigation in which he was involved with the house of Austin friars at Felley. On 3 Sept. 1436 the prior, Richard Worksop, demised to him tithes and 7s. of annual rent in Bramcote, a few miles outside Nottingham, for three years from May 1439, but the arrangement led to dissension. In 1447 Wilford claimed damages of £40 against the priory for infraction of the lease.11 CP40/729, rot. 403d; 742, rot. 153d; 746, rot. 415.

Soon thereafter Wilford found himself faced with a more important matter. In the early 1450s his quiet career entered a crisis. On 31 Jan. 1447, described as ‘of London, gentleman’, he had appeared before the mayor of the staple at Westminster to acknowledge a debt of £30 to Simon Marable, a London dyer, to be paid at the following Michaelmas. His failure to pay the debt resulted in the issue, on 1 July 1452, of writs to the sheriffs of Nottingham and York for his arrest and the seizure of his property. Although he was spared the indignity of arrest and imprisonment, on the following 5 Dec. the sheriffs of his home town held an inquisition into the location and value of his property. His most valuable holding was said to be a messuage in Long Row with an annual rental value of 19s. and he was also returned as holding tenements in Wheelwright Gate (now Wheelergate), Hen Cross and Castle Gate. The total value of his lands was put at £2 7s. 2d. p.a., which was presumably put to Marable’s repayment.12 C241/234/1B; C131/68/15; 233/1.

This setback appears to mark the end of Wilford’s career, and he probably died soon afterwards. It may be that the repercussions of his temporary loss of property explain the curious petition his son and successor, John, when an old man, presented to the chancellor in the late 1470s or early 1480s. He claimed that his grandfather, Henry Wilford, had conveyed property in Nottingham to a local lawyer, Thomas Hunte of Linby, and two clerks; this property had come into the hands of John Strelley*, as the grandson and heir of Hunte, the last of the three feoffees to die; and that Strelley now denied his requests to make estate to him. There is no record of Strelley’s answer, but Wilford’s claims are hard to accept. Hunte had died as long before as 1428, and the seisin of the family in the intervening period is implied by the forfeiture of 1452.13 C1/56/247.