MUNEDE, John

Although returned to Parliament twice, Munede does not figure, as far as the available evidence goes, among the leading men of Leominster. He makes his earliest appearance in the records in 1418-19, when he was one of four men of the town (including two other of its MPs, John Salisbury† and William Raves*) who entered into bonds, each in the sum of £40, to the county sheriff, Thomas Holgot†. When sued on this bond in 1426 he was unhelpfully described as ‘husbandman’ and, a year earlier, he had been given the higher rank of yeoman when sued for debt by the borough’s overlord, the abbot of Reading. More revealingly, in 1431, when again defendant in an action of debt, he was given the more specific designation of ‘chaloner’, a maker of blankets, and it thus appears that he, like many of the town’s MPs, was involved in the manufacture of woollen cloth. Save for his two elections no more is known of him.1 CP40/656, rot. 166; 660, rot. 423; 681, rot. 43; C219/13/2, 5. He is, almost certainly, to be distinguished from John ‘Muynde’ (d.1450), who had property at Sutton, Salop, worth 2s. p.a., in right of his wife, Sybil: CFR, xviii. 178; C139/141/2. This John was a descendant of William ‘Munde’, a tax collector in Salop in the 1390s: CFR, xi. 72, 97.