A HISTORY OF HEREFORDSHIRE 1 39 1, to 1 8 October, 1392, and he himself held the same office from 5 November, 1406, to 23 November, 1407."^° His uncle also had represented the shire in the Parliaments meeting in January, 1390, and January, 1393, while he himself sat in that of December, 1403.*'" In 1405 he was one of the justices of the county, and in 1409 he was summoned to Parliament as Lord Cobham in right of his wife, Joan, widow of John, Lord Cobham. Other families favourable to Lollardy were the Actons, the Cheynes, the Clanvowes, and the Greindors. In some instances proceedings were taken against Lollards connected with the county. In 1393 Walter Brut was tried at Hereford before the bishop, and forced to recant his opinions, and in the following year he was involved in an affray at Leominster, with the prior's servants, which resulted in further legal proceedings.-^^ In 1400 also Richard Wyche, a priest in the diocese of Hereford, was summoned during a journey into Northumberland before Skirlaw, bishop of Durham, and forced to recant,^^' Herefordshire did not entirely escape contributions to the expenses of the French war under Henry V, although we do not find it included in the earlier benevolence solicited by Henry IV in 1402.^^* In 1421 the King's Council directed a letter to be addressed to the mayor and certain of the principal citizens of the city of Hereford, directing them to pay over imme- diately to the treasurer a sum of forty pounds, which they had promised to lend the king, on pain of being brought before the Council.^'^ Again in 1436 the city appears twice assessed for a loan for the equipment of the army about to be sent into France, the first time at forty pounds, the second time at one hundred marks. '^^ The shire, however, contributed troops more than money. Among those of its gentry present at Agincourt may be mentioned Sir Roger Vaughan of Bredwardine, Sir Richard de la Mare of Dorstone, Sir John Baskerville of Eardisley, and Sir John Cornewall of Stapleton, who had married Henry IV 's sister Elizabeth. Cornewall brought with him a con- tingent of thirty men at arms and ninety archers. '^^ The county was probably socially one of the most backward in England. In 1438 Henry VI, in a letter to Pope Eugenius IV, described the inhabitants as wild and untamable by nature.^^* They suffered grievously from Welsh inroads, together with the inhabitants of Gloucestershire and Shropshire, and in 1442 it was enacted that for the next six years any Welshmen wrongfully carrying off Englishmen into Wales should be declared guilty of high treason.^^' This Act was renewed in 1449,*^°° and was supplemented in 1445 by an Act permitting Welshmen who had been indicted or outlawed to be taken in Herefordshire or pursued there by hue and cry.^" In 1425 the fifth earl of March, the last male of the mighty house of Mortimer, was cut off by the plague, and his territories in the Welsh Marches and in Ireland descended through his sister, Anne, to her husband, Richard, earl of Cambridge. When, therefore, the dynastic quarrel between the ^^ Lists and Indexes (P.R.O.), ix, 60. '"' Official Returns of Members of Pari, i, 237, 244, 265.
- ^*Foxe's Martyrs (ed. G. Townsend), iii, 131-88 ; G. F. Towusend, Town and Borough of Leominster,
32-6.
- " Fasciculi Zizanorum (Rolls Ser.), 370-82, 501-5. ^'^ Proc. of the P. C. ii, 72-6.
"' Ibid, ii, 282. "" Ibid, iv, 319, 321. **' Nicolas, Hist, of Battle of A^ncourt, p. 374. ^^Bekynton Corresp. (Rolls Ser.), i, 2. ^» 20 Hen. VI, cap. 3. '*"' 27 Hen. VI, cap. 4. '" 23 Hen. VI, cap. 4. 372
