DEEPING, John

More can be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 763.

John Deeping was employed by the wardens of Rochester bridge in a professional capacity. He may have sat on the bridge council and in 1423-4 acted with the warden, Henry Rowe, and John Clifton in letting some of the bridge’s property in London. In the same year he also travelled to another of the bridge’s properties, Grain, to hold the manor court there.3 Rochester Bridge Trust, wardens’ accts. 1423-4, F 1/33. The following year, by which time he was retained as clerk of the bridge with an annual fee of 13s. 4d., he rode to London with Clifton and stayed there for four days meeting the former chancellor, Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, an important patron of the bridge.4 Ibid. 1424-5, F 1/34. In April 1425 Deeping’s services were also called upon by Bishop Langdon of Rochester who appointed him as one of the arbiters in a dispute over parish boundaries between the vicars of St. Nicholas’s and St. Margaret’s, Rochester.5 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Rochester Diocese bishops’ registers, Langdon, DRb/Ar 1/8, f. 48v.