LUDLOW, John, of Oxford.

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

1395

Family and Education

m. (1) bef. 1396, Juliana; (2) bef. 1416, Alice,1 ?1s.

Offices Held

Bailiff, Oxford Mich. 1393-4, 1406-7; surveyor of nuisances 1401-2; mayor’s serjeant c.1413.2

Biography

Ludlow is first heard of in 1380 when he paid only 4d. towards the poll tax. He was then apprenticed to Roger Chichester, an Oxford apothecary, although in later years he also traded more generally as a spicer. During his first bailiffship, in 1394, he was specially appointed to proclaim the royal decree that all men born in Ireland must return there. His second term as bailiff coincided with the dispute between the borough and the university over ‘cession of actions’, and in October 1406 he was appointed, probably ex officio, as one of the town’s attorneys who were to negotiate ‘de quibusdam certis gravaminibus, materiis et querelis inter nos et dictos Cancellarium et scolares Universitatis’. In February 1408 he was again named as an attorney, with John Ottworth* and others, for a further round of negotiations which this time were held in the presence of Archbishop Arundel and his fellow members of the royal council. After serving on the borough’s common council in 1409, Ludlow became the mayor’s serjeant, a minor legal office.3

Much of Ludlow’s property in Oxford appears to have come to him by inheritance. After acting in 1396 as an executor of Thomas Baret*, he acquired George Hall, five shops and a garden in St. Edward’s parish, properties which had previously belonged to his former master, Roger Chichester, and the reversion of which, it would appear, Chichester had bequeathed to him. Subsequently, in 1416, Ludlow served as executor to Robert Boterwyk, the bedel of the university, who was a relative of his second wife, Alice. Boterwyk left to them both all his property in the town and suburbs, including a hall named Pope Hall and other messuages in the parishes of St. Michael Southgate, All Saints and St. Martin. Ludlow was still alive in 1425. After his death, the date of which is not known, he was regarded as a benefactor to the town, having left to the corporation a tenement known as ‘Pyebakers Place’.4

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: Charles Kightly

Notes

  • 1. Oxf. Hist. Soc. lxxxix. no. 432; Liber Albus Oxoniensis ed. Ellis, 198.
  • 2. Oxf. Hist. Soc. xxxvii. 19; lxvi. no. 389; Bodl. Twyne ms 4, f. 317.
  • 3. Oxf. Hist. Soc. xv. 170; xviii. 24; lxxi. nos. 186-7; CCR, 1392-6, p. 390; Twyne ms 23, f. 358.
  • 4. Oxf. Hist. Soc. xv. 170, 298, 492; lxxxix. nos. 429, 431-3; xc. no. 589; ser. 2, xiv. 224; Twyne ms 23, f. 474; Liber Albus Oxoniensis, 198.