WODELAND, Walter, of Devon.

Although he does not appear anywhere in the surviving records of Dartmouth, it seems likely that Wodeland was a local man, for when in 1408 he was appointed to his only royal commission, it was in association with the mayor and bailiffs of the town.1Perhaps he came from the same family as Sir Walter Wodeland, who m. Katherine, da. of William Champernowe of Ilfracombe and Tywardreath (Trans. Devon Assoc. lxxiii. 139). Most likely he was the Walter Wodeland who in 1413 (and then curiously described as ‘of Surrey’) joined Edmund Arnold of Dartmouth in asserting their rights to Le Cristofre of Danzig, a Prussian hulk captured by the crews of their ships on the voyage from Bordeaux to Southampton undertaken by the duke of Clarence’s army. Certainly, it was with Arnold that he was returned to Parliament for the first time. Meanwhile, at an inquiry held at Exeter in August 1414, Wodeland had served on a jury giving evidence about the possessions of the late earl of Huntingdon, John Holand (d.1400).2CCR, 1413-19, p. 25; Trans. Devon Assoc. lxxiii. 175. Otherwise he remains an obscure figure.