Sir John Whiddon (died 27 January 1576) of Whiddon in the parish of Chagford in Devon, was a Justice of the Queen's Bench from 4 October 1553 to his death on 27 January 1576, [2] during the reigns of Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I.
He was the son of John Whiddon of Chagford by his wife who was a member of the Rugg family of Chagford. His ancestors were resident in the parish of Chagford for at least six generations prior to the judge. [1]
Whiddon married twice. His first wife was Ann Hollis, daughter of Sir William Hollis, by whom he had a daughter, Joane, who married John Ashley of London. [1]
His second marriage was to Elizabeth Shilston, a daughter and co-heiress of William Shilston. [1] Among their eleven children were William, his eldest son and heir apparent, who predeceased his father without children, having married Eleanor Basset, a daughter of John Basset (1518–1541), and Francis (died 1606), fourth son, [1] whose granddaughter was the legendary Mary Whiddon. [3]
Their other sons included Edward (1537–1598), second and eldest surviving son and heir, who was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1559; Oliver, third son, who became Archdeacon of Totnes; and Nicholas (died 1598), who became Rector of North Bovey. [1]
Whiddon died on 27 January 1576. [1] His monument survives in St Michael the Archangel's Church, Chagford. [4] [5]
Whiddon entered the Inner Temple to study law and became Reader and later Double Reader and Treasurer of that Inn of Court. He was created a Serjeant-at-Law in 1547, and King's Serjeant in 1551. In 1553, Queen Mary I appointed him a Justice of the Queen's Bench. [7]
He is said by Dugdale in his Origines Juridiciales (1666) to have been the first judge who rode to Westminster Hall on a horse or gelding, before which time the judges rode on mules. [8] [7] The manner of judges riding to Westminster Hall is recorded in the case of his father's contemporary Thomas Wolsey (1473–1530) as "trapped all in crimson velvet, with a saddle of the same and gilt stirrups". [7]
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), he purchased the manor of Chagford in Devon. [9] He built there on his ancestral estate within that manor a new mansion house at Whiddon, part of which survives today. He enclosed a deer park with the surviving wall built of massive granite blocks at the entrance to the Teign Gorge. [6]
John Ford was an English playwright and poet of the Jacobean and Caroline eras born in Ilsington in Devon, England. His plays deal mainly with the conflict between passion and conscience. Although remembered primarily as a playwright, he also wrote a number of poems on themes of love and morality.
Chagford is a market town and civil parish on the north-east edge of Dartmoor, in Devon, England, close to the River Teign and the A382, 4 miles (6 km) west of Moretonhampstead. The name is derived from chag, meaning gorse or broom, and the ford suffix indicates its importance as a crossing place. At the 2011 Census, it had a population of 1,449.
Sir Edward Saunders was an English judge and Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench.
Sir John Basset, of Tehidy in Cornwall and of Umberleigh in Devon was Sheriff of Cornwall in 1497, 1517 and 1522 and Sheriff of Devon in 1524. Although himself an important figure in the West Country gentry, he is chiefly remembered for his connection with the life of his second wife and widow Honor Grenville, who moved into the highest society when she remarried to Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle KG, an illegitimate son of King Edward IV, and an important figure at the court of King Henry VIII, his nephew.
Sir William Courtenay of Powderham in Devon was a prominent member of the Devonshire gentry. He was Sheriff of Devon in 1579–80 and received the rare honour of having been three times elected MP for the prestigious county seat (Devon) in 1584, 1589 and 1601.
Sir Henry Ford, of Nutwell in Devon was four times MP for Tiverton between 1664 and 1685 and twice Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1669–70 and 1672–73.
Edward Drew (c.1542–1598) of Killerton, Broadclyst and The Grange, Broadhembury, Devon, was a Serjeant-at-Law to Queen Elizabeth I. He served as a Member of Parliament for Lyme Regis in 1584, twice for Exeter in 1586 and 1588 and in 1592 for the City of London. He occupied the honourable position of Recorder of the City of London.
Oliver Whiddon was Archdeacon of Totnes between 1568 and 1580.
Roborough is a village and civil parish 5.5 mi (8.9 km) from Great Torrington, in Devon, England. Situated topographically on the plateau between the Torridge and Taw Rivers, the parish covers 1,258 ha and contains a population of some 258 parishioners. It is surrounded by a pastoral landscape of rectangular fields, high hedges and scattered farmsteads.
The landed gentry and nobility of Devonshire, like the rest of the English and European gentry, bore heraldic arms from the start of the age of heraldry circa 1200–1215. The fashion for the display of heraldry ceased about the end of the Victorian era (1901) by which time most of the ancient arms-bearing families of Devonshire had died out, moved away or parted with their landed estates.
The Black Assizes is an epithet given to several outbreaks of "gaol fever" which struck various prisons and court-houses in England in the late 16th century and which caused the deaths of not only many prisoners awaiting trial but also the magistrates in the court buildings holding assizes.
John Wrey of North Russell, Sourton, and Bridestowe in Devon and Trebeigh, St Ive, Cornwall, was Sheriff of Cornwall in 1587.
Sir Nicholas II Hooper (1654-1731) of Fullabrook, Braunton and Raleigh, Pilton in Devon, was a lawyer who served as Tory Member of Parliament for Barnstaple 1695-1715.
Budockshed is a historic estate and electoral ward in the parish of St Budeaux, in Plymouth, Devon.
Whiddon is an historic estate in the parish of Chagford in Devon, England. The manor house, now known as Whiddon Park House, survives as a remnant of the larger 16th-century mansion house of the Whiddon family. The house displays the date 1649 inscribed above the inner doorway. The manor house is now the property of the National Trust and is let for a nominal rent, but on a full repairing and insuring lease expiring on 17 January 2079.
Sir Robert Chichester (1578–1627), (KB), lord of the manor of Raleigh in the parish of Pilton in Devon, was Custos Rotulorum and Deputy Lieutenant of Devon.
Sir John Wadham (c.1344–1412) was a Justice of the Common Pleas from 1389 to 1398, during the reign of King Richard II (1377–1399), selected by the King as an assertion of his right to rule by the advice of men appointed of his own choice, and one of the many Devonians of the period described by Thomas Fuller in his Worthies of England, as seemingly "innated with a genius to study law".
The manor of Broad Hempston was a historic manor situated in Devon, England, about 4 miles north of Totnes. The present village known as Broadhempston was the chief settlement within the manor and remains the location of the ancient parish church of St Peter and St Paul.
Nicholas Eveleigh (1562–1618) of Parke in the parish of Bovey Tracey in Devon, was an utter barrister, and served as Steward of the Stannary Court of Ashburton, Devon. He died aged 56 when the roof of Chagford Stannary Courthouse collapsed, killing him and nine others. His "sumptuous" monument survives in Bovey Tracey Church.
Bagtor is a historic estate in the parish of Ilsington in Devon, England. It was the birthplace of John Ford the playwright and poet. The Elizabethan mansion of the Ford family survives today at Bagtor as the service wing of a later house appended in about 1700.