WEOBLEY, John

Weobley is an obscure figure whose documented career was brief, but it was seriously disruptive. His surname and his connexion with (Sir) Walter Devereux I* suggests that he may have originated from Devereux’s manor at Weobley, some ten miles to the north-west of Hereford. However this may be, he made his career as a tailor in Hereford. In the late 1420s he leased property there from the dean and chapter of the cathedral, a lease known only from an action of waste sued against him by the dean and chapter in 1439. On 22 Jan. 1436 he served as a juror at a session of the peace in the city, and in 1442 he attested its parliamentary election, but he was not absorbed comfortably into the city elite.2 CP40/714, rot. 298d; KB9/229/1/73; C219/15/2. According to indictments taken before royal justices who visited the city in August 1452 in the wake of the duke of York’s rising, he put himself at the head of a disaffected group of tradesmen and other lesser townsmen, who resented the dominance of the greater. A jury of the town, headed by Richard Falk*, laid five charges against him and his adherents: first, that they had disrupted the mayoral election in October 1448, threatening the electors with death if they did not bend to their wishes; second, that in March 1450 they forcibly freed one of their number lawfully arrested by the mayor, John Welford*, and called upon the Welsh in the city to rise up against the mayor and citizens; third, that they, to the number of as many as 200, broke into the Tolsey and disrupted the mayoral election of 1450 (curiously, Weobley himself was not named in this indictment); fourth, that 32 of them, headed by our MP, took Devereux’s livery on 4 Jan. 1452; and, finally, that on the following 6 Feb. (that is, shortly before the duke’s rising at Dartford), they came together in the city in an illicit gathering for mutual maintenance.3 KB9/34/1/5.

The citing of the last two offences, intended to connect support for the duke with earlier disturbances in Hereford, raises questions. It may, indeed, be that the city was divided by faction in and around 1450 and that Devereux, through Weobley, exploited that division to rally support for York. Yet, if this was the case, it is surprising that the struggle in the city should be known only from the indictments of 1452. Further, other records suggest that Weobley was not the outsider he is portrayed by the jurors. At some point in the late 1440s he was elected as one of the city coroners; and, more significantly, on 23 Oct. 1450, four days after the alleged disruption of the mayoral election, he was returned to represent the city in Parliament by 15 attestors, including Welford, drawn from the city elite. If Weobley was foisted upon unwilling electors by Devereux, who was one of several of the duke’s men returned to this Parliament, it is curious that the indenture provides no clue to this irregularity. Further, in January 1452, the same month as Weobley allegedly took Devereux’s livery, he was named as an arbiter in a dispute between Welford and another townsman, Henry Brasier. No doubt his place in Hereford society would be clearer had he lived longer, but he appears to have died not long after his fellow townsmen indicted him. He has not been traced in the records after 8 Sept. 1452 when, described as ‘of Hereford, tailor, alias yeoman’, he secured a general pardon.4 C219/16/1; KB27/787, rot. 75; C67/40, m. 20.