Family and Education

m. by 1358, Joan, ?2s. inc. Nicholas*.

Offices Held

Biography

Members of the Hereward family are recorded as living in Arundel from 1296 onwards, and as representing the borough in five of the Parliaments of the early 14th century. John was perhaps the son of Simon Hereward, who was nominated as mayor of the town in October 1361, only to be defeated at the election. He himself had witnessed a deed at Arundel in 1356, and two years later he and his wife had settled a messuage there on John Cosham^† and his wife, Alice, to hold for their lives with remainder to himself and his heirs. In 1362 the lord of the borough, Richard, earl of Arundel, sued Hereward for trespass. He obtained a royal pardon of outlawry in June that year, after surrendering to the Fleet prison. The dispute had no doubt arisen from Hereward’s position among the earl’s tenantry. He was later a suitor to the hundred court of Avisford for land at Binsted and Madehurst, and farmed four acres of land at Tortington, all as a tenant of Earl Richard’s successor.1

At the elections to the Parliament of January 1380 Hereward provided mainprise for John Warnecamp, one of the burgesses-elect for Arundel. He served as a juror in May 1387 at the inquisition post mortem held locally on Joan, the wife of Sir Edward St. John. In July 1388 Hereward was charged in the borough court with having made an assault on John Patching*, by stabbing him with a knife. John Hereward ‘junior’, mentioned in the same court roll, and Nicholas Hereward, who was to be returned for Arundel to the Parliament summoned to Cambridge two months later, were quite likely his sons.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. Suss. Rec. Soc. x. 81, 134, 226; Arundel Castle ms M8; Suss. Feet of Fines (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxiii), no. 2207; Two Fitzalan Surveys (ibid. lxvii), 109, 146; CPR, 1361-4, p. 224; Suss. Arch. Colls. xi. 104.
• 2. C219/8/4; Arundel Castle ms M9; C136/46/20.