Family and Education

?1s. William Ruding†.

Offices Held

Jt. parker of Wedgnock park, Warws. (by appointment of the earls of Warwick) by Dec. 1394-aft. Mich. 1409.

Biography

William was very likely related to John Ruding, who by 1397 was acting as parker of the earl of Warwick’s estate at Claverdon, situated to the west of Warwick. He himself owed his initial appointment as joint parker of Wedgnock (to the north of the town) to the same earl, Thomas Beauchamp (d.1401), and he was holding the post when returned to his only Parliament in 1399. Having been retained by Thomas’s successor, Earl Richard, he was recorded in the Beauchamp receiver-general’s accounts of 1401-2 carrying out repairs to the property in his charge, and on one occasion being sent to London with £50 in cash for his lord’s use. By 1408 Ruding was farming land at Budbrooke (just outside Warwick), for which he paid the earl as much as £11 5s. a year. He is known to have owned an inn in the town itself and to have occasionally witnessed local deeds. In 1415 he was listed in the earl of Warwick’s retinue for service at Calais. He may have died before 1417, when references cease to his activities in Beauchamp service.1

The MP was perhaps the father of another William Ruding, who like him was of the affinity of the earls of Warwick. The younger man was to sit for the borough of Warwick in 1442.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. SC6/1123/5; CIMisc. vi. 306; Egerton Rolls 8769, 8770, 8772, 8773; E326/5380; Bodl. Dugdale ms 272, f. 281.
• 2. M.C. Carpenter, ‘Pol. Soc. Warws.’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1976), app. pp. 25, 103.