concerns

detached as son from Richard Woodrove and Mabel Pudsey on February 14, 2025

Stirnet's "Woodrove01" page (link below) does not mention this John's marriage to Mary Langfield.

links

• https://stirnet.com/genie/data/british/ww/woodrove01.php#top (membership required in order to view without interruption)

content to clean up

Birth: Woolley Hall, Yorkshire, England Several sources list John's birth as 1340, but this would be 11 years before his parents were married.

10/8/1377 Property: Woolley, Yorkshire, England Alice Fyncheden sold all her late husbands lands, tenements, mills, etc held in Wollay and Notton, to John Woodrove of Normanton, who (thus) acquired a residence in Woolley. YAJ 27, p 258

Poll TaxNormanton, Yorkshire, England Appears on Subsidy Rolls (Poll Tax) of 1379 for Normanton. Tax of 1/2 Marc. is highest in town. Mentions "Agnes" as his wife?

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Manor of Woolley

In the mid-fourteenth century, the nucleus of what became the Woolley estate belonged to Sir William de Notton, a man of local origin who achieved wealth and fame as a lawyer and derived his name from Notton, the village to the east of Woolley. His lands in Woolley and Notton passed in 1365 to Sir William de Fyncheden, by whose executor they were sold in 1377 to John Woodrove (or Woodroffe / Woodruffe) of Normanton.

The initial manor house in Woolley is first documented as owned by the Popeley family, of whom Robert Popeley was the last to reside, and on his death he passed the building down to his only daughter Christine. Christine married into the Rilston family and the manor house remained with this line through four generations to her great grandson Robert Rilston, the son of Edmund. In around 1490, Robert sold this house, together with the lordship of the Manor of Woolley, to Sir Richard Woodrove (a descendent of John Woodrove), who added them to his existing estate.

According to Geoffrey Markham, there is some confusion as to whether Rilston's manor house stood on the same site occupied by the present Woolley Hall. J.W. Walker, in his work on the Manor and Church of Woolley, seems to have assumed that Sir Richard Woodrove made Rilston's house his principal residence on acquiring it in 1490. However, Markham argues that Woodrove may have remained in his ancestral home in Woolley, itself a house of some importance, and that it may be this house, previously owned by Sir William de Notton and John Woodrove, that stood on or near the site of the present Hall.

Sir Richard Woodroffe (c.1440 - d.1522) was the High Sherif of York between 1510 and 1518, and one of the last members of the Woodroffe/Woodruff family to reside in the Hall. In 1559 (this should read 1599 - see comment on Sold Woolley Hall), Francis Woodroffe was forced to sell the house and all his lands in Woolley and Notton to his cousin Michael Wentworth, the great-great-grandson of Sir Richard Woodroffe and descendent of Sir Thomas Wentworth (aka Golden Thomas), the great grandfather of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Stafford, for £6000, the equivalent of nearly £1,200,000 today. Francis was the brother of Richard Woodroffe, who married Elizabeth Percy, the daughter of the infamous Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland, one of the two ring leaders of the Rising of the North.

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Justice of Peace - West Riding Yorkshire 1389-1397 , Wakefield, Yorkshire

Justices of the Peace in the West Riding, 1386-1413.S.Walker (In Med Yorks No 18). Sheriffs, esceaters, coroners and justices were socially prominent but poorly paid. Richard II had taken 70 knights and 200 esquires into his service 1389. The reform of 1389; left the work of the West Riding bench in he hands of a single, active gentry justice Sir john Saville of Elland assisted by two prominent lawyers with a local background, John Woodruff (11 sessions) and William Gascoigne of Gawthorpe (15) This remained so through1392-95-99. John Rushton.

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Woodruff Narrative

Was Receiver of Wakefield. He had lands in Woolley, near Wakefield, York. His will dated in the twenty first year of the reign of Richard II (1397) expressed the desire that he be buried in the churchyard at (Newland), Normantown (Normanton). The Newland estate was a small township on the outskirts of Normanton and lies on the north bank of the River Calder. Existing since 1213 when it was established by King John of England as a preceptory of the Knight's Templars, it was later transferred to the similar organisation, "The Knights Hospitallers" in 1256.[5] per Wikipedia

It is interesting to note that the church where John requested to be buried in 1397 was tied directly to the Knights Templars.