WOOD, John II

Wood was a lawyer resident in the neighbourhood of Newcastle-under-Lyme which, as a young man, he represented in five Parliaments in only eight years. He is known to have held property there: in August 1430, described as ‘of Keele’ he demised two crofts there to Thomas Clayton at an annual rent of 20d.3 Staffs. RO, Sutherland-Leveson-Gower mss, D593/B/1/23/8/2/1. He also held other small parcels of land in the neighbourhood: in 1429 he was recorded as the tenant of John Delves* at Whitmore for which was due an annual rent of a very modest 4d., and in 1443 he was in possession of lands at Beech and Swynnerton.4 CIPM, xxiii. 243; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. 1917, p. 208. Nothing is known of his holdings at Keele.

Wood’s appearances in the records are intermittent, He had standing enough to be appointed escheator in his native county in 1437, but he seems to have had only a narrowly localised legal practice. Although in 1439 he was a joint feoffee with Humphrey, earl of Stafford, there is no evidence that he ever found a place in the earl’s service and what else is known of his connexions relates principally to his lesser gentry neighbours. In 1440, for example, he made a settlement as sole feoffee of Stephen Wewys of Acton, very near Keele, and in July 1448 he contracted his daughter, Elizabeth, in marriage to Robert, son and heir apparent of another of his neighbours, James Boughey of Whitmore.5 Staffs. RO, Hand, Morgan and Owen mss, D1798/663/135, 161; Staffs. Studies ed. Morgan, 55-56. None the less, although Wood’s circle seems to have been a rather restricted one, he did have at least a passing association with some leading Staffordshire figures. In May 1441 he offered surety in respect of a royal grant to the future judge, John Needham*; and on 16 June 1445 he was among the jurors who assembled at Wolverhampton for the inquisition post mortem of William, Loord Ferrers of Groby.6 CFR, xvii. 189; CIPM, xxvi. 327. Later, in 1448 Ralph Egerton* and Egerton’s son-in-law, John†, son of John Delves, witnessed the marriage contract for his daughter; and, in 1451 he was named alongside John Hampton II* to arbitrate a dispute between Richard Grey of Whittington and John Whorewood of Compton.7 Staffs. Studies, 55; I. Rowney, ‘Staffs. Political Community’ (Keele Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 343.

Wood’s date of death is unknown, but he long survived his last election to Parliament. On the fairly safe assumption that he is not to be identified with the Newcastle-under-Lyme MP of 1472, the careers of the two MPs, presumably father and son, are very difficult to divide, not least because those careers were very similar. The older man was alive at least as late as 1459, when, in company with the duke of Buckingham, he made a re-conveyance on the feoffment of 1439. This suggests that he is to be identified as the mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1458. By this time, however, his putative son was also active. In a Chancery petition, dated after 25 July 1460, two John Woods of Keele, the one described as an esquire and the other as ‘junior’ and a gentleman, appear as pledges for the plaintiff, Richard Rugeley of Longdon (Staffordshire). The suit was resolved by 16 Nov. 1461 when Ralph Wolseley*, in a charter dated at Westminster and witnessed by one or other of the John Woods, conveyed to the plaintiff.8 Hand, Morgan and Owen mss, D1798/663/162; C1/28/202; CCR, 1461-8, p. 82.

All later references are likely to refer to the younger Wood. They certainly describe a coherent career. A lawyer like our MP, he was added to the Staffordshire bench in 1465, promoted to the quorum in 1468, and named to three gaol delivery commissions from 1470 and 1477. In 1477 he acted as an arbiter in a dispute between the borough he represented in Parliament and the priory of Trentham.9 C66/491, m. 18d; 536, m. 2d; 541, m. 24d; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 329. It has been inferred, largely from the mistaken issue of a writ of diem clausit extremum on 29 June 1471, that he fought for Edward IV at the battle of Tewkesbury, but this can be no more than speculation.10 Rowney, 126; CFR, xxi. 3.