LUDSOPP, William (d.1454), of Odell, Beds.

A man of obscure west-country origins who appears not to have succeeded to any landed inheritance, Ludsopp achieved advancement in the service of Sir John Cornwall, a well connected magnate with interests in the West Country as well as Bedfordshire, and by making a good marriage. He is first heard of in 1415, as a participant at the battle of Agincourt where he and (Sir) Thomas Wenlock* took several prisoners. Beds. Historical Rec. Soc. xxix. 59; E159/211, recorda Mich. rot. 27, Trin. rots. 10, 11. In all probability they fought at Agincourt under Cornwall, of whom Wenlock was also a retainer. It was with Cornwall that Wenlock returned to France in 1417, and he appears to have served continuously there until 1421. Ludsopp’s whereabouts in this period are unknown but it is likely that he was also in France for at least part of this period. Another of those who fought at Agincourt was Cornwall’s stepson, John Holand, earl of Huntingdon. Huntingdon fell into the hands of the French at the battle of Baugé in March 1421, and nearly five years later Ludsopp and Wenlock were among those of Cornwall’s men who went to the Guildhall in London to seek the enrolment in the City’s records of writings relating to his ransoming. Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 182-4.

Still ‘of Herefordshire’ in May 1421, when he acted as a surety for Cornwall, CFR, xiv. 420. Ludsopp had settled in Bedfordshire by March 1425 when he attested the election of the county’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of that year. He had acquired an interest in the county through his marriage to Elizabeth, the widow of Sir Thomas Woodhill, who held in dower from her previous marriage moieties of the manors of Great and Little Odell and Langford, as well as the whole of the manor of Great Durnford in Wiltshire and a moiety of that of Pattishall in Northamptonshire. CIPM, xxi. 760-1; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 542-3; iv. 504-5; G. Baker, Northants. i. 712; J. Bridges, Northants. i. 217; VCH Beds. iii. 71; C140/52/21; 55/28. Some years later, Elizabeth came into possession of further lands as the heir of her brother, Sir Thomas Chetwode. The son of Sir John Chetwode by his second marriage, Sir Thomas had succeeded the elder half-siblings of him and Elizabeth in 1420, but he himself died without surviving issue, leaving his sister as heir to the Chetwode manors in Chetwode, Buckinghamshire, Warkworth, Northamptonshire, and Hockliffe, Bedfordshire. While it is not clear exactly when Sir Thomas died, by 1453 Ludsopp was embroiled in legal proceedings at Westminster over an allegedly unjust distraint of livestock he had made at Warkworth, so suggesting that Elizabeth had come into her inheritance there by that date. Whatever the case, Ludsopp certainly never enjoyed possession of Chetwode, since the knight’s widow Agnes still held it in dower in the early 1460s. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 542-3; Bridges, i. 217; VCH Bucks. iv. 165; S. Tucker, Ped. Fam. Chetwode, 28; E159/230, recorda Mich. rot. 78. Still alive in 1447/8, when he conveyed a messuage in Overthorpe, Northants. to his daughter, Alice, Sir Thomas was certainly dead by 4 Feb. 1457, when Agnes awarded the lawyer, Ralph Legh*, an annuity of five marks from the issues of Chetwode: Tucker, 28; CCR, 1454-61, p. 189.

Through his marriage, Ludsopp acquired a stepson in Sir Thomas Woodhill’s son and heir, another Thomas. In May 1428 he paid the Crown 100 marks for the wardship of the younger Thomas, then still some three years short of his majority, thereby gaining possession of all of the Woodhill estates. As it happened, the grant was short-lived since in the following December the Crown, presumably having decided it was too generous, obliged him to surrender it in return for another. According to the terms of the new grant, he retained the custody and marriage of the heir (who was subsequently married to a daughter of Sir William Trussell†) and the keeping of those two thirds of the manor of Langford that his wife did not hold in dower, but the Crown resumed control of the rest of the Woodhill lands. CFR, xv. 222-3, 251-2; CIPM, xxi. 760-1; VCH Beds. iii. 71; Bridges, i. 205, 217. Later, Ludsopp fell out with his stepson, who in the early 1440s sued him over the alleged detinue of a muniment chest and its contents. CP40/720, rot. 361.

In spite of his wife’s estates elsewhere, Ludsopp adopted Bedfordshire as his county of residence. It was Bedfordshire which he represented in his only Parliament and where he served as an ad hoc commissioner and an active j.p. (although never of the quorum), and it was as one of its gentry that he was expected to swear the oath to keep the peace administered throughout the country in 1434. P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order, 253; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 373, 374. His name features twice in the Beds. list selected to swear the oath, but presumbly this is due to scribal error. Shortly after the Parliament opened, he became escheator of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, presumably a position he exercised through a deputy while sitting in the Commons. He was returned to the Commons alongside John Enderby*, a follower of Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin. Although Ludsopp’s own patron, Sir John Cornwall, would quarrel bitterly with Grey in the following decade, there is no evidence of any major disagreement in 1427. It is likely that the two magnates were still on relatively cordial terms in the late 1420s and early 1430s when Grey’s follower, John Fitzgeffrey*, served both Cornwall and Ludsopp as a feoffee. Corp. London RO, hr 158/61; 159/61; 163/22-23; Tucker, 19.

Whatever the state of the relationship between Cornwall and Grey in that period, it was seriously strained a few years later. Cornwall, created Lord Fanhope in 1432, challenged Grey’s pre-eminence in Bedfordshire by acquiring an estate at Ampthill, where he began to build a new castle and which lay just a few miles away from the Grey residence at Silsoe. The quarrel between them broke out into the open in the spring of 1437, when Ludsopp and another of Cornwall’s retainers, William Pekke*, were placed on a commission ordered to inquire into all felonies, trespasses and other offences committed in Bedfordshire. In a provocative move, Pekke arranged for the commissioners to sit at Silsoe, where on 21 May, a mere five days after the issuing of the commission, he and Ludsopp arrived accompanied by Cornwall and his ‘meyny’. Angered by this incursion into his neighbourhood and fearing that the commissioners intended to procure indictments of his own followers, Grey also appeared at the head of a large band of men. There was a real prospect of serious fighting until the sessions were deferred (in the end, they were probably never held) and the two magnates agreed to refer certain minor disagreements between them to arbitration. Over the following weeks, Ludsopp and his fellow commissioners received summonses to London. Having taken the precaution of acquiring a royal pardon on 11 June, he appeared before the King’s Council later that month, and again on 28 July, to answer questions about the events at Silsoe. Maddern, 206-9; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 570-1; PPC, v. 35-39, 57-59; C67/38, m. 20.

Much more serious than the episode of 1437 was the clash between the two sides at the sessions of the peace held at Bedford on 12 Jan. 1439. Cornwall arrived at the sessions accompanied by his fellow j.p.s, Ludsopp and Pekke, and a large number of other followers. The elderly Grey did not attend but his supporters, headed by Sir Thomas Waweton* and others of his retainers on the commission likewise came to Bedford in considerable force. After the sessions opened in an upper chamber, Cornwall and Waweton were involved in a heated exchange of words and weapons were drawn. In the ensuing panic, many of those present sought to escape down the stairs, causing a stampede and the crushing to death of 18 men. Later that day, Waweton, in association with John Enderby, two other j.p.s and the under sheriff, Thomas Stratton, drew up a certificate which presented their version of events and sent it to the court of King’s bench. Cornwall, Ludsopp and Pekke responded by means of a like certificate, dated 24 Jan., returned to the same court. In the following month the Council concluded that both accounts were biased and untrustworthy. On 7 Mar., after Cornwall had agreed to pay a fine at the Exchequer, the Crown issued a general pardon to him and 55 of his followers, including Ludsopp and Pekke, and on the following 30 May Waweton and his fellows were likewise pardoned. The quarrel ended on a more favourable note for Cornwall, himself a councillor and one of the King’s kinsmen, than it did for his opponents. The government excluded Waweton and other Grey men from the commission of the peace issued on 12 Mar., and Sir Thomas did not regain his place until after Cornwall’s death in December 1443. By contrast, while Pekke also lost his place on the commission, he would regain it over three years earlier, in July 1440. Maddern, 209-22; Griffiths, 571-2; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 246-7, 283; KB27/711, rex rot. 22; 713, rex rot. 3; E28/59/49-50. Unlike Lord Grey, who had died in 1440, Cornwall left no legitimate issue, and his executors sold his Ampthill estate to Ralph, Lord Cromwell. S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 885. In 1444 Ludsopp, who had possessed an interest in the estate as a trustee for Cornwall, witnessed the conveyance of these lands to Cromwell’s feoffees, but there is no evidence that he entered the services of the latter lord. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 222-3.

After the 1430s Ludsopp was not included on any further ad hoc commissions although he retained his place on the commission of the peace until his death on 27 Oct. 1454. Add. 32485, H6; 32490, N3. A year before he died he had been involved in a fracas in St. Martin in the Fields, Middlesex, although it is impossible to say what his business there was or whether this incident hastened his demise. On 28 June 1454 he had appeared in person in King’s bench to begin proceedings against John Gray and Thomas Hornsee. He claimed that they had attacked him in that parish on the previous 18 Oct., taking from him a gown, a cloak and a book called a ‘Portos’ (probably a breviary). He reappeared at Westminster in pursuit of his action in early July 1454, when he informed the court that the defendants were at large in Lincolnshire, but they had yet to answer his suit when he died. KB27/773, rot. 27. In spite of the strong connexions he had formed with Bedfordshire, Ludsopp was buried at Warkworth where his brass in the south transept of the parish church depicts a single figure in armour. Add. 32485, H6; 32490, N3; N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Northants. 444. There is no evidence that he had any children, and there is no extant will or inquisition post mortem for him. His widow survived for another 21 years, and it was only after she died in 1475 that her 40-year old grandson and heir, John Woodhill, took full possession of the Woodhill lands. John also succeeded to her Chetwode inheritance. C140/52/21; 55/28. The inq. post mortem held for Elizabeth in Wilts. found that she died on 10 Sept. 1475 but those held in Bucks., Beds. and Northants. gave the previous 28 Aug. as the date of the death. She had taken a 3rd husband after Ludsopp’s death, William Uvedale II*.