RODENALE, Richard

Save for the record of his election to Parliament for Midhurst, no mention of a Richard Rodenale has been discovered. There is a possibility that the MP was related to John Rodenale, who married Alice, one of the daughters and coheirs of Hamelin Matham (d.1382) of Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, and Molesey, Surrey.1 CFR, xvii. 23, 70. That this might be the case is suggested by the family’s links with west Sussex, and, more significantly, with Midhurst itself, for Alice’s nieces, the heiresses Cecily Wolbergh and Elizabeth Mitchell, were married respectively to William Sydney* and John Wood III* – the former being an eminent Sussex lawyer, and the latter the grandson of a prominent burgess of Midhurst. Indeed, Wood himself (destined to be Speaker in the last Parliament of Edward IV’s reign), had represented the borough in three of the Parliaments summoned in the 15 years before Rodenale’s met.2 Richard was not, however, a son of John and Alice Rodenale, for the latter died, in 1436, without surviving issue: C139/80/19; 90/15.