FEROUN, John

A draft of a Bedford court roll for 1400-1 contains the earliest known reference to Feroun. It records that Isabel Pers and Richard Hunt were separately bound over to keep the peace towards him (Isabel after she had used scurrilous language against him and Hunt ‘pro scoldyng’) but without revealing how their disagreements with him had arisen.3 Beds. and Luton Archs., Bedford bor. recs., ct roll, view of frankpledge, mayor of Bedford, 1400, BorBF11/3, ff. 1v, 5. Feroun appears to have played only a limited role as an office-holder at Bedford. Apparently a lawyer (a John Feroun acted as an attorney at the Bedford spring assizes of 1422), he was certainly a man of some status since he was among those Bedfordshire residents required to swear the oath to keep the peace which was administered throughout the kingdom in 1434.4 JUST1/1533, rot. 7; CPR, 1429-36, p. 375. Lawyer or no, he made use of the court of common pleas at Westminster in the mid 1440s, to pursue a yeoman from Ampthill and the executors of John Hert of Ware, Hertfordshire, over debts he claimed they owed him.5 CP40/718, rot. 429; 733, rot. 424d; 734, rot. 507d.

On at least two occasions, Feroun participated in land transactions outside Bedford, apparently in the role of a trustee.6 Beds. and Luton Archs., deeds, TW457, 460; W43. At some stage before June 1439, he conveyed lands and tenements in the Bedford parish of St. John’s to John Hawkyns, ‘alias Kempston’, but it is not clear whether he was acting as an owner or feoffee.7 Bedford bor. recs., deed, BorBE2/58. Hawkyns conveyed the same to Baldwin St. George and two of his feoffees, including John Cornwall, Lord Fanhope, in June 1439: deeds, BorBE2/60, 61. In short, there is no definite evidence for any properties he might have held in the town, although it is likely that he had interests at Milton Ernest, just to the north.8 CP25(1)/6/78/7. It is also possible that he possessed holdings at Newport Pagnell and elsewhere in the neighbouring county of Buckinghamshire in the right of his wife.9 CP25(1)/22/122/16. A Nicholas Feroun, probably a relative, held an inn at Bedford called Le Swan and five acres at Luton, both of which had passed to his ‘cousin’ and heir, Agnes, wife of the London brewer John Pamphon, by 1449.10 CP25(1)/6/81/10. Evidently, he predeceased the MP who was still alive in 1453-4.11 CP25(1)/22/122/16.