Family and Education

s. of Thomas Horde*. m. Agnes, da. of John Perle II* of Shrewsbury, 1s. Thomas^†.

Offices Held

Bailiff, Bridgnorth Sept. 1413-16, 1420-1, 1432-3, 1437-9, 1440-1, 1445-6,1 Shrewsbury 1429-30, 1435-6.2

Escheator, Salop and the adjacent march 23 Nov. 1419-16 Nov. 1420.

Commr. of inquiy, Salop Dec. 1419 (disseisin of two manors in Ercall) Oct. 1438 (estates of Joan, wid. of John Botrell) June 1440 (estates of John, late earl of Arundel).

Verderer, Morfe forest bef. May 1451.

Biography

During Horde’s first of no fewer than nine annual terms as bailiff of Bridgnorth, the burgesses of the town petitioned Chancery asking that John Wynnesbury*, then a j.p. for Shropshire, together with their bailiffs, should be commissioned to arrest John Bruyn* and members of his affinity for terrorizing the neighbourhood. It was later reported that, on 11 Nov. 1413, when Horde went to Oldbury near Bridgnorth to enforce Wynnesbury’s warrant, their opponents forcibly resisted arrest, Bruyn alleging that Horde and other townspeople had rebelliously been refusing to pay the parliamentary subsidies of which he was a collector.3

It was also while in office as bailiff of Bridgnorth that Horde was returned to the Parliaments of 1414 (Nov.), 1416 (Mar.) and 1420. His activities were not restricted to the confines of the borough, however, for he regularly attended the shire elections at Shrewsbury castle, being present at those for the Parliaments of 1413 (May), 1422, 1423, 1425, 1426, 1429, 1432, 1433, 1437, 1442 and 1447. Moreover, ten days after the dissolution of the fourth Parliament to which he himself was returned (1419), he secured royal appointment as escheator for the county. In 1426, as of Shropshire, gentleman’, he stood bail for the widow of William Latoner of Lichfield, indicted before the King’s bench for theft, and in May 1434 he was included among the Shropshire gentry sworn not to maintain those who broke the peace. In June 1440 Horde received a commission to inquire which estates of the late earl of Arundel had been omitted from the original inquisition post mortem. But he and his fellow commissioners failed to render an account of these holdings, and so the sheriff was instructed to seize certain properties of their own, in Horde’s case a virgate of land and a tenement in Northwood Hall (a hamlet near Wem) and premises in Bridgnorth, which were confiscated accordingly for most of 1443.4 These were not, of course, Horde’s only possessions. In 1431, when described as ‘of Shrewsbury’, he owned property in that town worth over £5. This included a strip of land and a garden outside the walls which he had presumably acquired by his marriage to the only daughter of John Perle, who had represented Shrewsbury in two of the Parliaments he himself had attended (those of 1422 and 1423). It was, no doubt, as a result of this marriage that he twice became bailiff of Shrewsbury, the first time only shortly after his father-in-law’s death. A house of his in Bridgnorth was, in March 1439 (during his seventh bailiffship), allegedly broken into by a malcontent tailor of the town. From about this time, Horde also leased a croft outside the north gate from Humphrey, earl of Stafford. In 1446 he and his wife settled on their son, Thomas, and his wife Joyce, daughter of John Stapleton II*, various holdings at Northwood Hall, Bridgnorth, Astley Abbots, Wem and Shrewsbury.5 Horde is last recorded attending the shire elections of 1447. At his death, which occurred between then and May 1451, he was a verderer of the royal forest of Morfe, immediately to the south of Bridgnorth.6

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. JUST 1/753 mm. 11, 15; Add. 28731, ff. 5d-6d; CPR, 1436-41, p. 346; CAD, iii. C3450; vi. C5483.
• 2. Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 3), iii. 375.
• 3. C1/6/189; SC8/231/11546; JUST 1/753 m. 15; RP, iv. 30-31.
• 4. C219/11/2, 13/1-4, 14/1, 3, 4, 15/1, 2, 4; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. (ser. 2), iii. 125; CPR, 1429-36, p. 408; E364/77 mm. Kd, Md, 82 m. H.
• 5. Feudal Aids, iv. 260; CPR, 1436-41, p. 346; Egerton 2190 m. 3; CP25(1)195/22/31.
• 6. CPR, 1446-52, p. 427. In 1465 his house in High Street, Bridgnorth, was in the possession of Thomas Person†, and another in ‘Hongrey Street’ (now St. Mary’s Street) was inhabited by his son: Trans. Salop Arch Soc. (ser. 4), vii. 215-16; C146/3377.