HEREFORD, John (d.c.1397), of Worcester.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

m. by 1375, Joan, 1da.

Offices Held

Bailiff, Worcester Mich. 1377-8, 1390-1.1

Commr. of arrest, Worcester July 1378.

Biography

Hereford is known to have resided in Worcester from June 1371, when he was one of those made responsible for forwarding a summons to Sir John Beauchamp of Holt to appear in Chancery concerning litigation over local property. In August of that year he rented a tenement in the High Street from a local ‘shereman’, and five years later, with his wife and daughter, Joan, he leased other buildings nearby. There, he carried on his business as a draper. To these holdings he added four shops in Baxter Street, acquired in 1385, and in February 1389 he paid 40 marks into the Exchequer to purchase a messuage in the High Street valued at less than £2 a year, which had been forfeited to the Crown by Beauchamp. Hereford attended the parliamentary elections for Worcester in 1384, 1386 and 1390 (Jan.), on each occasion finding mainprise for the appearance of the representatives.2

The tenement in the High Street acquired in 1371 and still in Hereford’s possession in 1396 was no longer his by October 1398, and it seems likely that he died in the meantime. His feoffees, among them John Bredon* and Thomas Belne (his fellow MP of 1393), then conveyed to his daughter and her husband, Master John Baret, other premises in Worcester, including shops and cellars.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

  • 1. Worcester Chs. (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 1909), 192-3; Collectanea (ibid. 1912), 28.
  • 2. CIMisc. iii. 814; v. 156; Collectanea, 11, 25-26; C219/8/11, 9/1, 5; CPR, 1388-92, p. 12.
  • 3. Collectanea, 29.