SKYDEMORE, Sir John

More may be added to the earlier biography.7 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 391-4.

The Skydemore pedigree is impossible to resolve, but it is probable that the father of this MP was John, younger brother of Richard Skydemore, mayor of Hereford in the 1380s and 1390s, and son of John Skydemore of Rowlstone. From about 1370 the younger John was in the employ of the Mortimers, serving them as deputy steward of Ewyas Lacy and constable of the castle of Clifford, and according to family tradition it was he who acquired property in Kentchurch (a few miles from Rowlstone), where his branch of the family settled.8 W. Skidmore, ‘Skydmore-Glyn Dwr Alliance’, Burke’s Peerage Occ. Pprs. xiii. 5-6; CPR, 1405-8, p. 246; R.R. Davies, Owain Glyn Dwr, 43 (where these Mortimer offices are wrongly attributed to our MP).

Our MP built on these foundations, although his career is principally famous for his marriage to a daughter of Owen Glendower. The earlier biography follows the old tradition that this marriage took place as early as the mid 1390s, leaving Skydemore in an awkward position during the Welsh rebellion as both son-in-law and active military opponent of the rebel leader. There can, however, be no doubt that the marriage came later. Our MP’s first wife was Margaret, daughter and eventual heiress of his Herefordshire neighbour and royal retainer, Sir Thomas Brut of Grove (in Llangarron near Goodrich), a match that had probably been made by 2 Sept. 1394, when Brut named Skydemore to act as his attorney while he was absent in Ireland.9 CPR, 1391-6, p. 477.

It is not known when Margaret died, only that, after her death, a dispute broke out over her inheritance between her son by Skydemore, John, and her uncle, Robert Brut of Thorney (Nottinghamshire). This dispute began late in the reign of Henry V, most probably immediately after her death. Thus, in the famous episode of July 1403, detailed in a surviving letter written by our MP, when Glendower declined to offer a safe-conduct to Skydemore’s wife and mother from the besieged castle of Carreg Cennon, the rebel leader was not, as is generally and improbably said, denying mercy to his own daughter and wife but rather to Margaret Brut and her mother, Joan. There is no certain evidence to date Skydemore’s second marriage to before 12 Feb. 1430, when he and Glendower’s daughter sued out a writ of error on outlawry of her father in the hope of securing her inheritance.10 KB145/6/8; KB27/676, rex rot. 16. It is possible that their marriage had taken place only shortly before and after her brother Maredud’s death had left her an heiress. The prize was hardly worth the gamble, but, given the events of the rebellion, it is hard to see her recommendations as a bride in any other terms. If this surmise is correct, then it contradicts the legend that the defeated Glendower spent his last years with his daughter at Kentchurch.

This attempt to secure the Glendower inheritance provides a plausible context for the striking Herefordshire indenture for the parliamentary election held on 27 Aug. 1429, when Skydemore was returned in company with one of the county’s most important gentry, John Russell I*. Although it was not surprising that they should have been elected – they had already sat together for the county on two previous occasions and were to do so again in 1433 – the indenture raises the possibility that their return was contested. It is notable that as many as 50 attestors are named, and more notable still that six of them were knights and 26, as designated in the indenture, esquires, including such significant figures as John Merbury* and John Abrahall* and two of our MP’s kinsmen: his son, John, and George Skydemore. In short, the election brought together the leading local gentry in a way that no other recorded fifteenth-century Herefordshire election did. One can only speculate as to why this should have been so, but it may be that Skydemore was anxious to secure a seat to put his new wife’s case. Certainly it was towards the end of the Parliament that he began his ill-fated attempt to reverse Glendower’s outlawry, and so win his wife’s inheritance from the Beauforts, to whom it had been granted in 1401. This was to have unfortunate consequences for him, but, if his marriage was a speculation, it is difficult to see him as entirely the victim in the affair.

Skydemore’s appointment on 29 Apr. 1431 as one of five justices to act in South Wales during the absence in France of the justiciar, James, Lord Audley, shows that he was not immediately compromised by his marriage and subsequent attempt to reverse Glendower’s outlawry. His mistake, after that attempt had failed, was to bring, in Hilary term 1433, a writ of formedon against John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, for the Glendower manors of Glyndyfrdwy and Sycharth in North Wales. This prompted the reaction described in the earlier biography.11 CP40/688, rot. 107d.

Despite the unfortunate end to his long career, Skydemore had a high posthumous reputation in his own family. Much later, his kinsman, Henry VIII’s courtier, John Skydemore† of Holme Lacy, told the antiquarian, John Leland, that, ‘Jenkin was a stoute fellow, and had al the rule of the [coun]tery there aboute’. He was probably also responsible for the still-surviving tower and gatehouse at Kentchurch Court.12 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, iv. 82; A. Emery, Greater Med. Houses, i. 478, 553-5.