ADDERBURY, John, of Adderbury, Oxon.

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

Jan. 1397

Family and Education

s. and h. of Walter atte Hall of Adderbury. m. (1) bef. Mar. 1411, Alice; (2) Joan (d.c.1434),1 s.p.

Offices Held

Commr. to put down rebellion, Oxon. Mar., Dec. 1382; collect an aid Dec. 1401.

J.p. Oxon. July-Dec. 1382, Feb. 1394-Apr. 1399, Feb. 1412-Oct. 1413.

Alnager, Oxon. 24 Nov. 1394-8 Feb. 1397.

Tax collector, Oxon. June 1404.

Biography

It appears to have been coincidence that John Adderbury was elected to the same Parliaments as Sir Richard Adderbury II (the latter representing Berkshire), for the two shire knights were not related. Indeed, John had only recently adopted the name Adderbury from the place where his father, Walter atte Hall, held a tenancy in the demesne lands of the bishop of Winchester, as well as a lease of rectorial tithes from New College, Oxford. John had served alongside his father on the Oxfordshire bench in 1382, although he most likely already enjoyed a separate establishment, for he employed his own chaplain (a man who in the following year was to be ignominiously brought before the j.p.s in Wiltshire for the theft of ecclesiastical ornaments from a church in Malmesbury). Following his father’s death, Adderbury appeared in Chancery in June 1389 and again in 1395, to make formal declarations as atte Hall’s heir and executor that certain royal commissions directed to atte Hall had never been received. Subsequently, he took over the lease of the Winchester demesnes at Adderbury.2

At the time of his first election to Parliament, in 1394, Adderbury was acting as steward of the manor of Deddington Castle, Oxfordshire, which belonged to St. George’s College, Windsor; and he may well have still been occupying this post six years later, when he contracted to farm the manor for the sum of £26 a year until 1405. It had been during his alnagership of Oxfordshire that, in January 1397, he had again been returned to Parliament for the county. A few days after the Commons rose he witnessed a quitclaim of the manor of Kingham made to the warden and scholars of New College by John atte Hall, probably his kinsman. In April 1399 he agreed to act as an attorney for Sir John Drayton* while the latter was in Ireland with Richard II’s army. No explanation has been found for his protracted absence from the local bench between then and 1412.3

Meanwhile, in 1404 Adderbury, described as ‘of Cottisford’, entered into an agreement with Richard Pavy esquire to lease Pavy’s manor of Walton by King’s Sutton, Northamptonshire (only a few miles from Adderbury), for an annual rent of ten marks; and seven years later he and his wife obtained a licence from the bishop of Lincoln permitting them to have religious services celebrated privately at Walton as well as at Adderbury. Although he ceased to be appointed to royal commissions early in Henry V’s reign, Adderbury made a loan of £5 to the Crown towards the conquest of Normandy undertaken in 1417. He witnessed local deeds in 1418 and 1421, but is not recorded alive thereafter.4 In October 1434 an inquisition post mortem was ordered following the death of his widow. He apparently left no surviving issue, for it was his brother Thomas who succeeded him in his holdings at Adderbury.5

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Notes

  • 1. Reg. Repingdon (Lincoln Rec. Soc. lvii), 202; CFR, xvi, 215.
  • 2. VCH Oxon. ix. 21; B.H. Putnam, Procs. J.P.s 387; CCR, 1389-92, p. 54; 1392-6, p. 400.
  • 3. A.K.B. Roberts, St. George’s Chapel Windsor, 172; CCR, 1396-9, p. 85; CPR, 1396-9, p. 551.
  • 4. CCR, 1402-5, pp. 364, 368; 1413-19, p. 508; 1419-22, p. 131; Reg. Repingdon, 202; E403/627 m. 6.
  • 5. CFR, xvi. 215 (the inquisition has not survived); VCH Oxon. ix. 21.