JURDAN, William, of Reigate, Surr.

Jurdan belonged to the family of this name which held land at Gatwick in Charlwood, in the hundred of Reigate, from the mid fourteenth century, VCH Surr. iii. 184. although he chiefly resided some seven miles away, in the town he represented in Parliament, where he is recorded witnessing a deed in July 1427. According to the tax assessments of 1436 his lands in Surrey gave him an annual income of £5. CCR, 1429-35, p. 106; E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (xii)d. In Hilary term 1442 Jurdan was accused in the court of common pleas of illegally encroaching on ten acres of meadow at Charlwood, but willingly allowed the plaintiffs to recover possession. CP40/724, rot. 331d. Other members of his family made their mark in Reigate: Roland Jurdan of Reigate was appointed to collect parliamentary subsidies in Surrey in March 1442; in the following year Reynold and Thomas Jurdan, noted in a seventeenth-century visitation as the MP’s sons, both served as jurors at the inquisition post mortem held in Reigate on Alice, widow of Sir John Dallingridge†, and in 1453 a John Jurdan was serving as one of two constables of the borough, as such being party to Reigate’s parliamentary indenture. CFR, xvii. 217; Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. xliii), 123; CIPM, xxvi. 112; C219/16/2. In Henry VII’s reign the same or a younger John, perhaps a grandson of the MP, occupied the manor of Gatwick, allegedly ‘by crafty means’, although claiming that the late Reynold Cobham had disposed of it to him and others by various sales and mortages. John eventually acquired the whole manor, to which his descendant, Edmund Jurdan, added in 1625 those of Charlwood and Shiremark, thus further enhancing the status of the family. VCH Surr. iii. 184.