Family and Education

m. (1) by Nov. 1391, Mariota; (2) prob. by Sept. 1409, Elizabeth, da. and h. of John Pyel of Irthlingborough, 1s. poss. (3) Joan.2

Offices Held

Commr. of oyer and terminer, Northants. May 141 (an assault on the manor of Hargrave).

Biography

It is tempting to identify this MP with his celebrated contemporary, Sir William Huddlestone of Coupland in Northumberland, a Lancastrian retainer who was knighted by Henry V after the battle of Agincourt, and who subsequently played a notable part in the wars against the French. This distinguished soldier also owned estates in the Lonsdale area of Lancashire, but there is nothing to suggest that his interests extended as far south as Northamptonshire.3 Given that we are evidently dealing with two men who shared no more than a common name, the shire knight emerges as a rather obscure figure, about whom little is known. He probably married his first wife, Mariota, shortly before November 1391, for it was then that the couple were confirmed in possession of three tenements in Seaton, Rutland, which had been settled upon them for life. Huddlestone seems to have remarried by September 1409, when the steward of the duchy of Lancaster estates in Northamptonshire was ordered to take security from him for the payment of a relief for certain property lately held by John Pyel, whom we know to have been his second wife’s father. Pyel owned the manor of Bataille Fee in Irthlingborough, which was certainly in Huddlestone’s hands by 1412. His income from the manor, together with other unspecified estates in Northamptonshire, was then assessed at £23 a year, and must have included revenues from the manor of Sudborough, which he and his wife later conveyed to Ralph Green* and others probably in an enfeoffment-to-uses. He was sitting in Parliament for the first time in 1411 when Green presented a petition to the Commons concerning his title to the estates confiscated from his father in 1399, and it may well be that Huddlestone had him to thank, in part at least, for his election on this occasion. One of his other associates was the prominent London merchant, John Reynwell*, with whom he joined in February 1414 to offer securities of 1,000 marks on behalf of Thomas Tykhill of Derbyshire, a prisoner in the Tower.4

Huddlestone may have died soon after his second return to Parliament in March 1416, since no references to him survive after this date. He appears to have had three wives in all, although it is not entirely certain that the ‘Joan widow of William Huddlestone, esquire’, who offered bonds of £100 to Sir Richard Neville at the beginning of Henry VI’s reign was married to the Northamptonshire MP. The latter is said to have left a son named Henry, who inherited the manor of Bataille Fee and died in 1488.5

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: C.R.

Notes

• 1. W. Prynne, Brevia Parliamentaria Rediviva, 122.
• 2. CAD, iv. A9574; DL42/16 (2), f. 18v; E210/2870; VCH Northants. iii. 208.
• 3. DL42/15, ff. 161, 163d, 16 (1), ff. 22d, 25, (3), f. 15d; E101/69/6/479; E404/31/582; N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 102n, 369, 380; DKR, xli. 716, 719; xlii. 314, 391, 397, 406, 438, 447; xliv. 565, 568.
• 4. CAD, iv. A9574; VCH Northants. iii. 208; CP25(1)178/92/12; DL42/16 (2), f. 18v; Feudal Aids, vi. 501; CCR, 1413-16, p. 116; RP, iii. 656.
• 5. VCH Northants. iii. 208; E210/2870.