SHELFORD, Robert

No trace of a Robert Shelford has been found. It may be speculated that the MP was a kinsman of one or other of the three contemporary clerks employed by the Crown who all shared his surname. The first, Henry Shelford, is most likely to have been related to the MP. A ‘King’s clerk’ who had strong connexions with Weymouth and its neighbouring port Melcombe Regis, he had been active on the Isle of Portland in 1404, three years later he was appointed to supervise the controllers and collectors of customs and subsidies at Melcombe and adjacent ports, and himself took up the post of collector not long after. Later in life appointed a tax assessor for Dorset, he became parson of Wyke Regis, and joined Master Adam Moleyns, the clerk of the Council and dean of Salisbury, and the prominent local merchant Henry Russell* alias Gascoigne in founding the guild of St. George in Weymouth, by royal licence of 1442 (although he did not live to see the completion of the endowment in 1455).1 CPR, 1401-5, p. 404; 1405-8, p. 344; 1441-6, p. 70; CFR, xiii. 81. The brothers John and Thomas Shelford, both clerks in Chancery in the early part of the century, befriended their fellow clerk Nicholas Bubwith (d.1424), successively King’s secretary and keeper of the privy seal, who ended his days as bishop of Bath and Wells. Bishop Bubwith dictated his will to Thomas Shelford, who saw to it that it was properly executed.2 M. Richardson, The Med. Chancery Under Hen. V (L. and I. Soc. special ser. xxx), 123; C1/6/150; Som. Med Wills 1501-30 (Som. Rec. Soc. xix), 328. In his turn, Thomas called Bubwith his ‘lord and creator’ in the will he made in 1426. By then a canon of Wells cathedral, he asked to be buried there next to Bubwith’s tomb, and left 200 marks for three chaplains to pray for him. However, although Thomas referred to two sisters and left £80 for the dowries of two nieces, he did not mention Robert Shelford, our MP, and his nomination of Richard Hunnyng* of Cambridge as his executor points to the origins of his family in that part of England rather than in Dorset.3 Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 117-18.