COMELOND, John, of Shepton Beauchamp, Som.

The sole evidence for Comelond’s connexion with Wells (apart from his election to Parliament) is a mandate of November 1387, addressed to him and the sheriffs of London, requesting them to arrest anyone who disputed the title of Master Thomas Spert to the chancellorship of Wells cathedral.CPR, 1385-9, p. 393. His main landed interests in Somerset, all of which were held in right of his first wife, Agnes, were situated 15 miles or more from Wells at Wearne and Shepton Beauchamp, although he and Agnes conveyed some of her holdings to Sir John Berkeley I in 1390, and more to Robert Veel, the lawyer, in 1400. In the 1380s Comelond had acted as a feoffee of estates in the same area on behalf of Sir John Weyland.Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xvii), 109, 121, 140; ibid. (xxii), 2; CCR, 1385-9, pp. 239, 325, 581.

Comelond’s association with Veel indicates that he was the John Comelond who later held land in the vicinity of Dorchester, acquired through marriage to a local heiress, Joan Sexpenne, whose stepsister was Veel’s wife. But this led to lawsuits between the Comelonds and the Veels over property at Fordington and Frome Whitfield. In the course of proceedings of an assize of novel disseisin at Dorchester in March 1422, Joan claimed that Comelond (described as ‘of Salisbury’) had received royal letters of protection dated 23 Feb. that year, valid so long as he was abroad in the retinue of the duke of Bedford, by which he was exempted from all legal actions for nine months, so that there was no need for him to answer Veel’s charges. Veel reposted that these letters had been addressed to one John ‘Combelond’ and had been altered by the Comelonds for their own ends; when no Chancery enrolment could be found of the patent in question, the proceedings continued.C1/5/94; Yr. Bk. 1 Hen. VI (Selden Soc. l), 86-90; JUST 1/1531 m. 10; J. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 413. It seems likely that it was another, younger, John Comelond (perhaps the MP’s son), who served in the retinue of Sir Walter (now Lord) Hungerford*, captain of Cherbourg, from 1428 until after 1434, by which later date he was acting as gaoler of Cherbourg: DKR, xlviii. 255, 261, 264, 299.