Family and Education

Offices Held

Porter of Painscastle and forester of Colwyn and Newydd, Rad. (by appointment of Thomas, earl of Warwick) 9 May 1387-d.

Reeve of Kibworth Beauchamp, Leics. (by appointment of the same) bef. July 1397.

Biography

John may have been related to William Russell, who in 1383 helped to found the guild of St. George in Warwick, of which Thomas, earl of Warwick, was a patron,1 and to Robert Russell I* of Dudley and Sir John Russell* of Strensham, both of whom had begun their careers as retainers of the same magnate. Evidently he, too, was of Earl Thomas’s affinity, and at the time of his two elections to Parliament for the earl’s borough of Warwick he was discharging offices in the Welsh march to which he had been appointed for life by his lord. Furthermore, in 1396-7 he is known to have had a lease on certain Beauchamp lands at ‘Cubbeworth’.2

The MP may have been the John Russell who with his wife, Maud, became a member of the Trinity guild of Coventry. John Russell ‘of Warwick’, who sold property there in 1419, was perhaps his son.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. CPR, 1381-5, p. 263.
• 2. CPR, 1385-9, p. 350; CIMisc. vi. 303; Egerton Roll 8769.
• 3. Reg. Holy Trinity Guild Coventry (Dugdale Soc. xiii), 17; Warws. Feet of Fines (ibid. xviii), no. 2512.