HOOD, William

The Hoods were one of the most important families in Leominster. Between 1393 and 1460 five Hoods represented the borough in a total of at least 12 Parliaments. William Hood was the last to be elected. He first appears in the records in 1431 when joint-defendant with his kinsmen, Thomas Hood* and Walter Hood*, in a plea of debt sued by a Leominster chaplain. Here he is described as a mercer as he is in a later action, but that was not his only designation: in November 1452 he sued out a general pardon as a chapman; six years later he did the same as a mercer alias vintner; and in 1462 he was defendant in actions of debt as yeoman and as merchant alias mercer alias vintner.1 CP40/681, rot. 294d; 701, rots. 191d, 363d; 803, rot. 25d; C67/40, m. 9; 42, m. 15. His commercial interests, however, are otherwise undocumented, and his public career is nearly so. In 1453 he attested the election to Parliament of his kinsman, Walter Hood, and, to the Yorkist Parliament of 1460, he was himself returned with the committed Yorkist, Hugh Shirley*.2 C219/16/2, 6. He was returned because he appears to have shared Shirley’s Yorkist sympathies. On 1 Apr. 1456, with his kinsman, John Hood*, and Thomas Bradford*, he had been among the Leominster men who illegally took the livery of one of the duke of York’s principal lieutenants, (Sir) Walter Devereux I*. Later, in Hilary term 1459, together with the Yorkist John Welford* and Walter Hood, he had been among those appealed by Alice, widow of David Beelte, as accessories in the death of her husband, an offence that was probably connected with Yorkist-inspired disturbances in Herefordshire.3 KB9/35/6; KB27/791, rot. 19.

Hood did not long survive his single election to Parliament. He has not been traced in the records after 1462, when he was sued for a debt of £5 by John Milewater, receiver-general to the late duke of York, and himself sued two other former Leominster MPs, Bradford and Thomas Monmouth*.4 CP40/803, rot. 25d; KB27/804, rot. 42d.