WODELAND, Walter, of Devon.

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

Family and Education

Offices Held

Commr. of arrest, Devon Feb. 1408.

Biography

Although he does not appear anywhere in the surviving records of Dartmouth, it seems likely that Wodeland was a local man, for when in 1408 he was appointed to his only royal commission, it was in association with the mayor and bailiffs of the town.2 Most likely he was the Walter Wodeland who in 1413 (and then curiously described as ‘of Surrey’) joined Edmund Arnold* of Dartmouth in asserting their rights to Le Cristofre of Danzig, a Prussian hulk captured by the crews of their ships on the voyage from Bordeaux to Southampton undertaken by the duke of Clarence’s army. Certainly, it was with Arnold that he was returned to Parliament for the first time. Meanwhile, at an inquiry held at Exeter in August 1414, Wodeland had served on a jury giving evidence about the possessions of the late earl of Huntingdon, John Holand (d.1400).3 Otherwise he remains an obscure figure.

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

  • 1. Or 1416 (Mar.)
  • 2. Perhaps he came from the same family as Sir Walter Wodeland, who m. Katherine, da. of William Champernowe of Ilfracombe and Tywardreath (Trans. Devon Assoc. lxxiii. 139).
  • 3. CCR, 1413-19, p. 25; Trans. Devon Assoc. lxxiii. 175.