Although Whelpington was a prominent local lawyer, there is little else to be added to the earlier biography.The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 826-7. His career was a long one for he was active as an attorney in the court of common pleas as early as 1402. From 1427 to 1444 he was retained as a councillor by John Wessington, prior of Durham; and in 1431 he was named as an executor by Sir William Claxton of Claxton (county Durham) but declined to act. CP40/567, rot. 126; B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 131; B.A. Barker, ‘The Claxtons’ (Univ. of Teeside Ph.D. thesis, 2003), 27, 134-5. His widow was alive as late as 1451, when she was assessed in Newcastle to a subsidy at an annual income of £5. E179/158/54, m. 3.
