DODESHAM, William

Dodesham, whose thirteenth-century ancestors included members of the important Fichet family, was the son of a busy Somerset lawyer of the same name, active both in the south-west and in the Westminster law courts.4 C139/88/49; CP40/679, rots. 545, 548; 712, rot. 331d; 723, rot. 323d; KB27/701, rot. 59; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 54; Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1400-1445 (Som. Rec. Soc. lviii), 555, 592. The elder William Dodesham, who set his seal to the parliamentary election indenture for the city of Wells in 1415, served as a tax collector in his native county in 1404, 1406 and 1413, and it was probably also he who held the same position in 1431.5 C219/11/3; CFR, xii. 283, 289; xiii. 62; xiv. 27; xvi. 68. He survived until 1440, and some of his later activities are difficult to distinguish from those of his son and heir who in his father’s lifetime was normally, albeit not invariably, styled ‘junior’.

The extent of the Dodeshams’ landholdings is uncertain, but along with the family seat in Gurney Street in the tithing of Orchard they included land in Cannington (which had descended to the elder William Dodesham from his mother, Joan de la Yo), property in Carhampton, and burgages in Dunster and Bridgwater.6 CP40/723, rot. 323d; Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1400-1445, 545; 1468-1485 (Som. Rec. Soc. lxx), 913; CIPM, xxiii. 556; C67/41, m. 23. While these holdings did not come into the younger William’s hands until after his father’s death, he was by then already in possession of the inheritance of his wife, Joan Oldemyxon, one of the nieces and coheirs of Roger Walsh. Her lands included a quarter share of the manors of Hutton in Somerset and Oldbury in Gloucestershire, as well as other scattered holdings in the two counties.7 Som. Feet of Fines, 189-90. Dodesham’s acquisition of these lands was fraught with some difficulty, for apart from Joan’s sister Agnes, the wife of Richard Payn of Ludwell, her aunt Agnes Walsh, who had taken as her second husband Thomas Sambroke of Sambroke, also had a claim to a share of the Walsh estates. In January 1430 the heirs agreed to submit the partition of the inheritance to the arbitration of the local lawyers William Gascoigne I* and Richard Geyton, and bound themselves in bonds for £20 to abide by their decision, but although the arbiters made their award on the same day, litigation between the heirs was still ongoing more than a decade later.8 According to one version of events, Dodesham’s father had also been one of the arbiters. CP40/723, rot. 480; Reg. Bekynton (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 131; Ashton Court mss, AC/D/11/16-18, 20, 22, 24; CCR, 1454-61, p. 62. Similarly, Dodesham’s title to some of his property in Cannington was called into question by John of Ile (alias Avyle), the corrupt bailiff of Cannington hundred for Robert, Lord Poynings, who in the spring of 1436 was said to have forcibly expelled him from some of his holdings there, and who two years later falsely arrested him in an attempt to extort money.9 KB9/230B/192; KB27/704, rot. 61; CCR, 1435-41, p. 337-9. The bad blood between Dodesham and John of Ile was of long standing: C1/11/58-59. Probably also concerned with property rights was a curious dispute which came before the justices of the King’s bench in the autumn of 1447. On 12 Nov. Dodesham personally appeared in court and used his privileges as an accredited attorney to bring a bill against Walter Michell, a gentleman from Cannington closely connected with the prominent lawyer Alexander Hody*, and an associate, John Wolmere, claiming to have been frequently assaulted and waylaid by them in an abortive (and fraudulent) attempt to assert his villein status. This harrassment, so Dodesham successfully asserted, had taken place in spite of an arbitrated understanding reached between him and his opponents in October 1446, under the terms of which Michell and Wolmere had presented him with a gallon of beer. The affair was eventually decided in Dodesham’s favour at the Ilchester assizes of September 1449, and Michell and Wolmere were condemned to pay £10 in costs and damages. Even before the matter came to trial, Dodesham had clearly used his connexions, for in May 1447 Walter Michell and his kinsman William Michell had been bound in the substantial sum of 400 marks to two of the greatest landowners in the shire, Sir William Bonville* and William Stafford*, to keep the peace towards the former MP and his servants, and to appear in Chancery to answer charges.10 CCR, 1441-7, p. 480; KB27/746, rots. 98, 135d. By comparison, nothing appears to have come of countersuits simultaneously brought by Michell and his patron Hody against Dodesham and his wife.11 KB27/746, rot. 78.

Dodesham followed his father into the law, and established a busy private practice even in the latter’s lifetime. Among his clients were important local gentry, such as Bonville, Sir Reynold Stourton (a younger son of John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton), the Churchills, Beauchamps and Luttrells of Dunster, wealthy widows like Joan Keynes, relict of Sir John Speke*, and fellow lawyers like Edward Cullyford*,12 C1/166/77; KB27/746, rot. 98; CP40/736, att. rot. 5d; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 194, 522; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 652; iii. 582; CIMisc. viii. 406, 449; Som. Feet of Fines, 115, 117, 145; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/884; N.L. Ramsay, ‘The English Legal Profession’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 7. as well as a range of lesser men,13 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 284; KB27/746, rot. 100; CCR, 1447-54, p. 158; 1454-61, pp. 132, 435; Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1445-68 (Som. Rec. Soc. lx), 745, 763-5, 947; 1468-1485, 947; Som. Feet of Fines, 105, 115, 136, 141, 206; Reg. Stillington (Som. Rec. Soc. lii), 302; E326/5041, 5056. and it is likely that he was the ‘Dodsame’ to whom Humphrey Stafford IV*, earl of Devon, owed money at the time of his death ‘for promises unfulfilled’.14 Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 198. Dodesham’s practice brought him considerable wealth, which allowed him to purchase extensive, if scattered estates in his native county, including the manor of Codecomb Mohun (acquired from Richard, Lord Strange and Mohun, in 1445), some 200 acres of land and other holdings in East Chilton, Bridgwater, Huntspill, North Bower and elsewhere in Somerset (purchased in 1455 for 200 marks), and land at Quantock in Spaxton.15 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 350-1; CPR, 1441-6, p. 401; 1467-77, p. 115; C140/77/78; Reg. Bekynton, 792; Som. Feet of Fines, 119; VCH Som. vi. 32, 115, 214; Northants. RO, Finch Hatton mss, FH2683.

By contrast with his private practice, Dodesham’s participation in public life remained limited. There is no suggestion that his membership of the Commons of 1442 gave him a taste for parliamentary affairs, and it was not until more than a decade later that he is known to have been present at a parliamentary election. Similarly, it appears that his appointments to office under the Crown remained restricted to two minor royal commissions in the first half of 1455. Occasionally, he became party to charitable projects by virtue of his profession. Thus, he played a part in the establishment of the Ralegh chantry in the church of Nettlecombe, and later, in 1477, he was among the feoffees of the property of the almshouse at Ilchester.16 CPR, 1476-85, p. 17; W. Buckler, Ilchester Almshouse Deeds, 133, 137, 140, 141; Reg. Bekynton, 792; CCR, 1447-54, p. 442.

Dodesham died on 11 Aug. 1480, and was buried in the parish church of St. Mary at Cannington next to his wife who had predeceased him eight years earlier.17 CFR, xxi. 563; C140/77/78; Procs. Som. Arch. Soc. lxxxvii. 73; xc. 78-79. He left no children, so his heirs were the grandsons of his two sisters, John Peryman and Alexander Pym. By his will, Dodesham settled the family seat at Gurney Street (probably the house which survives to the present day) on his niece Agnes Peryman, the wife of Walter Michell (d.1487), probably a younger namesake of William’s erstwhile adversary.18 C140/77/78; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 234, 253; VCH Som. vi. 82; Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1468-1485, 1008. Peryman later married Edith, da. of John Hymerford*: Som. Archs., Kemeys-Tynte mss, DD\S\WH/116.