FORD, John II, of ?Dorchester, Dorset.

It may be that the MP for Lyme Regis was related to his namesake, John Ford I*, the Dorset lawyer who sat in eight Parliaments between 1410 and 1423, all but the first as a representative for the county town of Dorchester. Yet the impoverished borough of Lyme often returned outsiders, and the MP’s relatively common name makes a convincing identification difficult.

Narrowing down the possibilities gives us two John Fords, either of whom might have sat in the Commons of 1460. First, there was the royal servant who in 1448 was granted in reversion the office of joint keeper of Henry VI’s ships, to hold from the death of Richard Clyvedon, by then busily engaged in selling off what little remained of the fleet, although it is uncertain whether he ever succeeded to the office. CPR, 1446-52, p. 176; Navy of the Lancastrian Kings (Navy Recs. Soc. cxxiii), 15. That John Ford became a groom of the King’s chamber by Michaelmas 1451, and in December that year, as a yeoman of the Crown, he shared custody of lands in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, confiscated from an idiot. The King himself succumbed to mental illness in the autumn of 1453, but Ford remained in attendance at court, and in the following year was granted £10 for his diligent service in this respect. E101/410, f. 44; CFR, xviii. 250; E403/798, mm. 2, 11; 800, m. 2. Although not specifically named in the council ordinances of November 1454, which reduced the size of the Household, he may nevertheless have continued to be a member of it, for just over five years later, on 13 Feb. 1460, this yeoman of the Crown was granted for life 6d. a day from the issues of Kent. CPR, 1452-61, p. 548. If it was indeed he who was returned for Lyme Regis to the Parliament summoned to meet on the following 7 Oct., election came at a point when he was facing dismissal from royal service; the King was virtually a captive following the Yorkist victory at Northampton, and the composition of the Household was undergoing radical change. He lost his position before 5 Dec. that year, the close of the first parliamentary session, for it was as ‘former yeoman of the Crown’ that he then received an assignment at the Exchequer for payments due to himself and various other creditors of John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, the one-time treasurer of the Household. E403/820, m. 4. What became of the yeoman of the Crown is uncertain, although a John Ford was later appointed as a serjeant-at-arms by Edw. IV, as such being granted for life wages of 12d. a day from the customs of Exeter and Dartmouth on 23 Nov. 1469. Although his inq. post mortem does not survive (only the writ sent to the escheator of Surr. – C140/78/101a), he is known to have died on 12 Jan. 1481: CPR, 1467-77, p. 184; CCR, 1476-85, no. 641.

The other possibility, perhaps the stronger one, is that the MP was the John Ford who lived in Dorchester from the mid 1450s. That John had appeared as a juror in the town in 1456 at the inquisition post mortem on the Dorset esquire David Cervington. C139/163/5. More significantly, at the county court held there on 22 Sept. 1460 to elect the knights of the shire he stood surety for Lord Stourton’s son and heir (Sir) William Stourton*. It is entirely credible that the name of this mainpernor was then listed as one of the MPs for Lyme on the schedule returned to Chancery with the shire indenture. Furthermore, at the Dorset elections held in 1467 a John Ford stood surety for both the shire knights returned. This may well have been the John Fourde (sic) who subsequently held office as bailiff of Dorchester for six terms between 1469 and 1486, and who while in office attested the borough elections of 1478. C219/16/6, 17/1, 3.

Of the personal affairs of the Dorchester man a little may be reconstructed from different pieces of information. In 1468 he had brought a suit in the court of common pleas against a local man named Nicholas Moleyns for assaulting his wife Margaret in their home town. CP40/829, rot. 208d. His occupation is not recorded, but it may be that he was trained in the law. A petition sent to the chancellor by Thomas Gascoigne in the 1470s alleged that he had refused to return evidences relating to property in Honiton, Devon; C1/65/172. while other petitions to the same chancellor, the bishop of Lincoln, arose out of his activities as executor of the will of John Lovebond, the parson of the church at Lyme. These concerned a similar failure on Ford’s part to return legal documents; and his own contention that commissioners of the papal curia at Rome had neglected to enforce a judgement given in the testator’s favour against the abbot of Sherborne. C1/59/309, 66/179. The executorship, by connecting him with Lyme, albeit tenuously, is a further pointer that the Dorchester man was the former MP.