treasurership to William de Melton (d. 1340) [q. v.], archbishop of York, only to receive the chancellorship of the exchequer on 17 Dec. The latter office he held merely for a few months, possibly for Robert de Stratford [q. v.], who was abroad part of the year; Wodehouse delivered up the seal to Stratford on 16 Oct. 1331. For a few years Wodehouse appears only once in the rolls, and then merely in connection with the duties of his archdeaconry. On 10 March 1338 he was again appointed treasurer of the exchequer, but delivered up the keys to William la Zouch [q. v.], from whom he had received them, on 16 Dec. of the same year. On 3 May 1340 he got license to alienate in mortmain certain lands for the support of two chaplains who were to perform divine service for his good estate in life and in death. He probably died about 1345, as his will was proved on 3 Feb. 1346 (Le Neve, iii. 138).
Wodehouse seems to have been a faithful if not an indispensable servant of kings, who held many arduous offices, but he was undoubtedly a notable pluralist. It is improbable that the above list of his preferments is an exhaustive one (Le Neve, Fasti, i. 591 et passim).
[The details of Wodehouse's biography are drawn almost exclusively from the recently published Calendars of Patent and Close Rolls, Edward I–Edward III; see also Le Neve's Fasti; Rot. Parl. vol. ii.; Blomefield's Norfolk; Foss's Judges.]
WODELARKE, ROBERT, D.D. (d. 1479), founder of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, was the son of Richard and Joan Wodelarke (De precibus statutes of the college). He was one of the six original fellows of King's College, was the third surveyor of King's College chapel during its building, and superintended the works till Henry VI's deposition in 1455. Henry had promised 1,000l. a year, and when this payment ceased Wodelarke paid the sum of 328l. 10s. 4d. out of his own means. He was provost of King's from 1452 to 1479, and did much to promote learning in the university. He bought a site on 10 Sept. 1459, and on St. Catharine's day, 25 Nov. 1473, he formally founded a college, or hall, or house, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and to St. Catharine of Alexandria, patroness of Christian learning. He intended to endow a master and ten fellows learned in philosophy and theology, but the troubles of civil war obliged him to reduce his original scheme to a master and three fellows. He built the college on two tenements in Mill Street, Cambridge, and endowed it with funds described in a memorandum drawn up by him and still preserved in the college (Philpott, Documents, p. 1). The college was to be called St. Catharine's Hall or Catharine Hall, a name which it retained till, on the general revision of collegiate statutes in 1860, with the other ancient collegiate foundations of Clare and Pembroke, always before called halls, it was designated college, perhaps because in the university of Oxford the word hall indicates a subordinate position. He drew up the original statutes (ib. p. 11), and obtained a charter from Edward IV on 16 Aug. 1475 (ib. p. 8). He obtained licenses for divine worship in the college chapel on 15 Jan. 1475 and 26 Sept. 1478 (ib. pp. 30, 31). His sister Isabel, wife first of William Bryan of Swyneshed, Lincolnshire, and afterwards of John Canterbury, added to the endowment in 1479 (ib. p. 32). He gave the college a library of eighty-seven volumes of manuscript, including three books of Aristotle, ‘Cicero de officiis,’ one book on medicine, one on geometry, five histories, the ‘Etymologiarum’ of Isidore, and all the standard works in theology. The college thus founded has ever since been pre-eminent for learning, and has produced, besides eminent men in most branches of knowledge, more than twenty bishops and three senior wranglers. Wodelarke was chancellor of the university in 1459 and in 1462, and died in 1479.
[Corrie's Catalogue of the Original Library of St. Catharine's Hall (Cambridge Antiquarian Society), 1840; Philpott's Documents relating to St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, 1861; Willis and Clark's Architectural History of the University of Cambridge; Austen Leigh's History of King's College.]
WODENOTE, THEOPHILUS (d. 1662), royalist divine, born at Linkinhorne, near Launceston, Cornwall, was son of Thomas Wodenote, M.A., fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and vicar of that parish, who was descended from the Wodenoths or Woodnoths of Cheshire [see Wodenoth, Arthur]. His mother was Francisca, daughter of Henry Clifford of Boscombe, Wiltshire. He was educated at Eton school, and was elected in 1606 to King's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. He proceeded M.A. in due course, and was incorporated in that degree at Oxford on 13 July 1619 (Wood, Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 390). He graduated B.D. at Cambridge in 1623, and was created D.D. in 1630. He was vicar of Linkinhorne from 1619 to 1651, when he was sequestered from his benefice on account of his adherence to the royalist
