Family and Education

prob. s. of John Rody of Warwick and yr. bro. of Nicholas*. m. Cecily.

Offices Held

Biography

Rody’s presumed father and namesake was a prominent figure in the affairs of Warwick: he frequently acted as a witness to local deeds (notably for the foundation of St. Anne’s chantry in St. Mary’s church in 1405), and was recorded on the parliamentary indentures for the borough on no fewer than eight occasions between 1410 and 1422. Indeed, John senior was present as an elector when the younger John was returned to his first two Parliaments. He made an enfeoffment of four messuages and a garden in Warwick and Whitnash in 1435 (these properties later coming into the possession of Nicholas Rody), and was still alive two years later, so it seems likely that it was he, rather than the MP, who leased the church of St. Laurence from St. Mary’s college and the Swan Inn from the earl of Warwick.1

John Rody junior did not follow the older John in his trade as a goldsmith; rather, like his putative brother Nicholas, he trained to be a lawyer. Like him, too, he was of the affinity of the lord of the borough, Richard, earl of Warwick. Thus, in 1422 he acted as attorney at the local assizes for three of the earl’s most influential retainers: John Baysham, clerk, John Weston* and John Throckmorton*. In 1432-3 he received a fee of 13s.4d. from St. Mary’s college for his services as a spokesman in the King’s bench. Meanwhile, it was probably he who had attested the Warwick elections to the Parliament of 1426, for his name was accorded a place further down the list of witnesses than that usually given to the goldsmith.2

Rody died before 1443, when his widow sold a house in Warwick.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. E326/5380; E40/9044; E164/22 ff. 32d-35; C219/10/5, 6, 11/2, 12/3-6, 13/1; Minister’s Accts. St. Mary’s Warwick (Dugdale Soc. xxvi), 3, 128; Warws. Feet of Fines (ibid. xviii), no. 2580.
• 2. JUST 1/1524 m. 30, 1537 m. 32; Minister’s Accts. 7; C219/13/4; M.C. Carpenter, ‘Pol. Soc. Warws.’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1976), app. pp. 24, 103.
• 3. Warws. Feet of Fines, no. 2616.