FORD, John II, of Dorset.

From 1408 onwards Ford, a lawyer by profession,He has been distinguished from the Dorchester mason of the same name, who between 1417 and 1421 held property in ‘Durnelane’ in the town; Dorchester Recs. ed. Mayo, 221, 237. is recorded as providing mainprise in a number of legal actions for trespass and debt brought in Wiltshire, one such requiring his appearance in Chancery while the Parliament of 1410 was in session. In October 1413 he was associated with John Cheverell, another Dorset lawyer, as mainpernor at the Exchequer on behalf of the prior of Wareham, when he took on the farm of the priory estates, and the same two subsequently, as the prior’s agents, paid into the Exchequer the rents due. Earlier in his career Ford had acted as a trustee of property in Blandford St. Mary, for settlement on Sir Stephen Derby and his wife. In 1417 he was returned for Dorchester to the first of the seven consecutive Parliaments in which he served the town. During this period he once (in March 1421) attended the election of the knights of the shire for Dorset in a county court held at Dorchester.CCR, 1405-9, p. 373; 1409-13, pp. 70, 93, 358; CFR, xiv. 36, 348; Harl. Roll CC31.

Among those for whom Ford acted as a trustee of their landed holdings in Dorset was John Roger I’s elder son (with regard to property near Bridport, in 1427); and in 1429 he appeared as attorney for members of the Baron family in the plea of trespass they brought in the King’s bench against Thomas Hussey II. It may well have been the same John Ford who gave evidence at an inquisition at Wareham in November 1431.Dorset Feet of Fines, ii. 293, 338; CCR, 1422-9, p. 319; C260/139/3; Feudal Aids, ii. 109.