STUDLEY, Walter

More may be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 520.

Studley may have met his death as a consequence of a quarrel with his kinsmen by marriage the Cricklades. On 6 Feb. 1438 he was waylaid and attacked at Cadnam in the hundred of Chippenham by a group of armed men including the blacksmith Henry Dowell from Micheldene in Gloucestershire, on the orders, as was later claimed, of Joan, the wife of John Hodgkins alias Ferrour of Chippenham. With a ‘cleyfe’ Dowell inflicted a deep head wound on Studley, which killed him. Whether or not Joan (who was ultimately acquitted by a jury at the Salisbury assizes) was indeed complicit in the killing, it is interesting to find Robert* and Nicholas Cricklade, respectively the elder son and another kinsman of Studley’s brother-in-law Thomas Cricklade* standing bail for her after she surrendered to the Marshalsea in early 1440.3 KB27/715, rex rot. 1. Studley was survived by his second wife, Agnes, who within little over a year of his death was being pursued by Thomas Cricklade and his wife (Walter’s half-sister) in the courts.4 CP40/713, att. rot. 1. Perhaps in search of support, she married Henry Dummere before the year was out.5 CP40/715, rot. 620d.