OUDEBY, John

The Oudebys had come to play a leading role in the parliamentary representation of Rutland during the last years of the fourteenth and early years of the fifteenth centuries, probably as a result of the successful careers at the royal court of two clerics.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 884-6. Our MP’s paternal uncle, John (d.1413), rector of Flamstead in Hertfordshire, served as Beauchamp chamberlain of the Exchequer from 1396 until his death in 1414, an office in which he had succeeded John Hermesthorp, who was a maternal great-uncle of our MP. Hermesthorp was warden of the hospital of St. Katherine’s near the Tower of London for over 40 years, and acted briefly as keeper of the privy wardrobe in the early 1380s as well as holding the Beauchamp chamberlainship from 1376 until 1396.4 J.H. Wylie, Hen. V, i. 2n.; Early Lincoln Wills ed. Gibbons, 131; PRO List ‘Exchequer Officers’, 16, 173; VCH London, i. 529; T.F. Tout, Chapters, iii. 451; iv. 461; vi. 37. When he drew up his will on 12 Dec. 1411, he provided lavishly for the education of his young great-nephew: 20 marks was to be spent over four years on his basic education ‘in arte grammadicali’ and a further 40 marks to support him at the Inns of Court on completion of his basic education.5 Lambeth Palace Lib. Reg. Arundel, 2, f. 163.

Such provision was perhaps the more necessary for it may be that John was then only a younger son. According to the pleadings in a suit in the court of common pleas in 1436, Thomas Oudeby, who represented Rutland in three of the Parliaments between 1397 and 1404, died before the end of Henry IV’s reign to be succeeded by his eldest son, another Thomas. This version of the Oudeby pedigree is supported by a pardon of June 1437 which shows that our MP had both a father and a brother named Thomas and was executor to one or both of them.6 Leics. Village Notes ed. Farnham, v. 312; C67/38, m. 15. But if the pedigree can be accepted the dates given in the suit cannot. Our MP’s father was still alive in Henry VI’s reign. In a fine of 1423 he, with his wife Joan, the heiress of property in Essex, had her manor of Apton Hall in Canewdon settled on themselves for life, with remainder to their son John and his wife, Margaret, sister of John Godmanston*. Moreover, the Essex subsidy returns show that this manor was in the hands of Thomas as late as 1428.7 Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 1; Feudal Aids, ii. 212. In any event, whatever the precise descent of the Oudeby estates, it is not in doubt that John began his adult career some years before he inherited them. He attested the Rutland parliamentary election held on 15 Nov. 1414 and, much more significantly, in 1415 he fought in the Agincourt campaign in the retinue of Sir William Porter†.8 C219/11/5; E101/44/30/4, m. 5. This is the only evidence of his military service but it is not improbable that he participated in Henry V’s later campaigns. He then came to play a prominent part in the affairs of Rutland, perhaps as a consequence of a settlement of land made upon him by his father at the time of his marriage. On 7 Oct. 1423, styled as ‘of Stoke Dry’, he was returned to Parliament, and, while sitting in the Commons, was appointed to the shrievalty. He was again returned on 24 Jan. 1426, in what proved a brief burst of administrative activity that was not to be continued once he had assumed the headship of his family.9 C219/13/2, 4.

Although Oudeby’s first wife was from Essex as was Thomas Bataill, the husband of his sister, Eleanor, there is no evidence that he spent much time in that county. The survival his mother at least into the 1430s meant that, if he did inherit her lands, it was not until nearly the end of his life. Moreover, in her lifetime he had begun to divest himself of his future interests there. In April 1434 he quitclaimed a marsh in Sutton to feoffees to the use of Thomas Pynchoun.10 VCH Essex, iv. 176; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 307-8.

More than 20 years after his uncle John Hermesthorp’s death Oudeby sued his sole surviving executor, John Rede, clerk, for the money bequeathed for his education. In a petition to the chancellor, he claimed that the executors had failed to deliver this money to Hermesthorp’s niece, Agnes Oudeby, a nun in the abbey of Barking in Essex, who had been charged with its safe-keeping to the use of her nephew, the young John.11 C1/11/21. At about this time he was also involved in common-law litigation. In Michaelmas term 1435 he sued the prior of Launde in Leicestershire for the advowson of Oadby, pleading that the priory had granted the right of presentation to his family for a term of 40 years in 1377, a grant that had been changed to one in fee in 1402. The prior responsible for making these grants was the notorious Thomas Colman, who had been accused in 1388 of wasting the priory’s resources, and there can be little doubt that Oudeby’s dispute with the new prior, William Northampton, arose out of the latter’s efforts to reverse the effects of Colman’s bad management. The plea failed, and in 1446 the priory had licence to appropriate the living.12 CP40/699, rot. 578d; Leics. Village Notes, v. 312; VCH Leics. ii. 11-12.

Oudeby appears often enough in the business transactions of his neighbours to show that he was a man of account. Early in his career he was a feoffee of Katherine, widow of Sir Thomas Aylesbury†, and later acted in the same capacity for Nicholas Fynderne in the disputed Derbyshire manor of Stretton-en-le-Field. His father’s close association with the Lords Zouche of Harringworth is echoed in his appearance as a charter witness for William, Lord Zouche, in 1430. With Zouche, he was a feoffee for William Brauncepath* in 1426 and for Sir John Basynges in the 1430s.13 CPR, 1422-9, p. 87; CCR, 1435-41, p. 382; CIPM, xxvi. 427-9; CP25(1)/179/93/35. Yet his closest association was with Thomas Greenham*, with whom he represented Rutland in the Parliament of 1426. Elizabeth Oudeby, who was perhaps our MP’s grandmother, had stood as Greenham’s godmother in 1399, and this was perhaps the origin of their friendship. In Easter term 1429 Oudeby offered surety when Greenham was appealed of mayhem and soon after he was acting as one of his feoffees.14 CIPM, xxii. 222; KB27/692, rot. 69d; CP40/712, rot. 110d.

The last references to Oudeby come in 1441: in June he was appointed to his first and last ad hoc commission of local government and in the following Michaelmas term he sued a husbandman of Gumley (Leicestershire) for taking four of his cows there. He was certainly dead by 30 Sept. 1445 when the surviving feoffees of Sir John Basynges made a grant.15 CPR, 1436-41, p. 573; CP40/723, rot. 209d; CIPM, xxvi. 429. On 26 Nov. 1450 his son and heir, another John, granted the prior of Launde his right in the disputed advowson of Oadby. The younger John was succeeded by his brother, Walter, a canon of St. Paul’s. The latter, on his death in 1499, was in turn succeeded by his nephew, Richard, who, in the 1520s, sold the family manor of Oadby to Thomas Waldram, son of a London brewer.16 Leics. Village Notes, v. 312-15; PCC, 29 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 233); Quorndon Recs. Supp. ed. Farnham, 85.