John Radford’s kinship with the renowned lawyer and recorder of Exeter, Nicholas Radford, was, at best, tenuous: his grandfather had been a first cousin of Nicholas’s father, indeed, there appears to have been some degree of confusion as to how many generations separated John from their common ancestor.
Although it is possible that (as Wedgwood believed) it was Radford’s synonymous father who represented Plymouth in 1450, it seems more likely that it was the younger man who sat in Parliament in both 1450 and 1455. This John probably received some legal training, although (as for his more prominent kinsman) the details of this training are obscure. It is possible that he was at one stage a member of one of the inns of court or Chancery, for he was at times styled ‘of London’. Certainly, he was professionally associated with Nicholas by the autumn of 1448, when he delivered into the court of King’s bench an inquisition over which the latter had presided.
It is likely that John owed his election to Parliament in 1450 to the good offices of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, near whose principal seat of Tiverton his home at Oakford was situated and with whom the family were connected not least through Nicholas Radford, who had formerly been steward of the comital estates and who continued to provide the earl with counsel. Certainly, John was at Westminster during the first session of Parliament, when he found mainprise for the Cornish lawyer Richard Penpons* (a service which he would perform at least twice more in later years).
In the following years relations between Radford’s patron, the earl of Devon, and his local rival, William, Lord Bonville*, which had been strained since the early 1440s, grew ever more acrimonious. From 1451 the earl resorted to open violence to try and settle the score, and four years later Nicholas Radford, who had numbered both the earl and Bonville among his clients, fell victim to Thomas Courtenay’s armed retainers. It seems unlikely that even in the early months of 1455 anyone connected even indirectly with Bonville could still enjoy Courtenay’s confidence, and it is consequently not certain to what circumstances John Radford owed his election for the borough of Barnstaple that spring, or, indeed, what prompted him to seek election. He was a serving Member of Parliament (which was then in recess) when his kinsman Nicholas was murdered on 23 Oct. 1455. The Commons reassembled on 12 Nov. for their second session, which was dominated by the issue of the unrest in the south-west sparked by the earl’s violent activities. There is no definite record of what part Radford took in the deliberations that led up to the duke of York’s eventual re-appointment as Protector, but it is likely that he was vociferous in his condemnation of the Courtenays. It must have been during this session that he presented a formal petition against the murderers, which – although directed to King Henry VI, and bearing the royal assent without any indication that Lords or Commons had been consulted – may also have been brought to the attention of Parliament: several of the accessories to the murder were later said to have been indicted or attainted by authority or act of Parliament.
It is difficult to disentangle Radford’s other affairs from the fall-out of the murder of Nicholas and the execution of his will. Thus, an enfeoffment of lands that Nicholas had made in February 1455 to John and others led to protracted litigation against the Exeter baker John Tylerd* and his wife. The matter may, however, have been settled before too long, for within a few years the prominent Exeter lawyer Thomas Calwodlegh*, who had been condemned to pay Radford £200 in damages for an alleged trespass, accused Tylerd of having perjured himself in Radford’s favour.
Few details of John’s later career have been discovered. In July 1472 he was attesting property transactions for his neighbours, but no details of a suit he brought against one John Hoper, in which a writ of error was issued in the autumn of 1473, have come to light.