Family and Education

b. 1498, 1st s. of William Rudhale of Rudhall by Anne, da. and coh. of Simon Milborne of Tillington, Herefs. and Icomb, Glos. educ. I. Temple, adm. 7 Feb. 1516. m.Isabel, da. of Richard Whittington, at least 2s. 4da. suc. fa. 22 Mar. 1530.2

Offices Held

J.p. Worcs. 1524, 1526, Herefs. 1525, 1528.3

Biography

The well established family of Rudhale took its name from Rudhall, near Ross, where it had been settled since at least the early 14th century. John Rudhale’s father, who had been steward of Hereford in 1511-13, was prominent as a bencher of the Inner Temple: he presided over the parliament there which admitted John Rudhale to masters’ commons in 1516 and which assigned him a chamber with his father ‘next the fig tree’. The family’s improvement of its estates incurred the displeasure of Bishop Booth of Hereford, who thought that they were being augmented at the expense of the bishopric.4

Rudhale’s election as junior knight for Herefordshire in 1529 doubtless owed something to his father, who had preceded him in that capacity nearly 40 years earlier, but it could hardly have been uninfluenced by his kinship with Sir Richard Cornwall, his senior colleague, who had married his aunt. Rudhale was not to enjoy his Membership for long. Although when he made his will on 13 May 1530, barely two months after his father’s death, Rudhale professed himself ‘whole in mind and in body’, his own death followed swiftly and the will was proved on the same day, 27 July, as his father’s. It reveals him as a conscientious son and father in his limitation of his funeral expenses to 40s. so that his own father’s debts could be paid and his six or more young children provided for. His wife, who is not mentioned, may have predeceased him; his executors were his mother and a cousin, and another relative, his ‘master’ Sir Thomas Englefield, judge of the common pleas and joint master of the wards, was appropriately entrusted with the wardship of the heir.5

The vacancy created by Rudhale’s death was filled by the election of John Scudamore, who married, as his second wife, Rudhale’s sister Joan.

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: A. J. Edwards

Notes

• 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.
• 2. Date of birth given in Duncumb, Herefs. iii. 165. Vis. Herefs. ed. Weaver, 91, 93; Williams, Herefs. MPs, 36.
• 3. LP Hen. VIII, iv.
• 4. Duncumb, iii. 153-60; Cal. I.T. Recs. i. 36; Reg. Caroli Bothe (Canterbury and York Soc. xxviii), 45-54.
• 5. PCC 26 Jankyn.