Hugh or Hugo Dod
c
1395 to c 1450 (estimated)
DOD00051
|
Return to the Home Page of the Bakers Family part of the website |
The Bakers of Highfields Story
The Story of the Dods and Bakers and of Highfields,
Fenton House and Hasfield Court. A journey through the history of Cheshire
and Staffordshire, an Anglo-Saxon nobleman who retained his lands after the
Conquest, pottery at Stoke on Trent, an encounter with Elgar, and the history
of an Elizabethan manor house at Audlem |
The family tree of the Bakers of Highfields |
The Family Tree of the Dods, predecessors to the
Bakers of Highfields |
The Bakers of Fenton House and Hasfield Court
The Family Tree of the pottery Bakers of Stoke on Trent |
The Family Tree of the Bellyse Family |
The main part
of this website tells the story of the Farndale family from Yorkshire Descendants of Arthur Baker, the story of the
Farndale ancestry is told through the main part of this website You can also return to the Farndale
website home page |
The genealogy of the family of James Hall, linked to
the Baker family through marriage to Arthur Baker |
Headlines of are
in brown.
Dates are in red.
Hyperlinks to
other pages are in dark
blue.
References and
citations are in turquoise.
Context and local
history are in purple.
1395
Hugh Dod was the son of
John Dod of Farndon (DOD00043).
The Dods of Cloverley descend from
Hugo, living in the fourteenth of Henry IV, who married the coheiress of Roger
de Cloverley. He was the son of John Dod of Farndon, who was son of Roger Dod
of Edge, living in the reign of Edward III., which John Dod had also acquired
property in Shropshire, by marriage with the coheiress of Warden of Ightfield. (Ormerod, George, History of the County Palatine
and City of Chester, Volume 2, page
374; and Blakeway, p. 206).
The Dods of Cloverly, from whom
the Dods of Highfields were descended, were in turn a cadet branch of the Dods
of Edge, who had held that manor, near Malpas in
Cheshire, since the reign of Henry II and, as Wolley Dod, are still seated
there today (Robinson, John Martin (1991), Highfields,
Audlem, Cheshire, Seat of John Bellyse Baker, Country Life 31 January 1991,
page 48 see also Country Life, 21 November 21,
1985).
Hugh Dod, of Cloverley Hall, Calverhall, Shropshire, Lord of the Manor of Cloverley
(jure uxoris), married Ages, daughter and heiress of Roger de Cloverley, and
had issue (Burke, John and Burke, Sir
Bernard (1836)(Eighteenth Edition, 1972), Bellyse
Baker of Highfields in Burke’s Landed Gentry, Volume 3, pages
35 to 38).
1418
Hugh Dod married Agnes de
Cloverley, daughter of Roger de Cloverley, in 1418.
Cloverley was an estate
the family owned since the early fifteenth century.
The
estate at Cloverley was previously occupied by a moated house, although in 1851
only the moat and bridge remained. The property, at that time, was the seat of
the Dod family, a junior branch of the family from Edge Hall in Cheshire (now
the Wolley-Dod family), who descended from John, son of Roger Dod of Edge who
was living in circa 1350. John’s great-grandson and namesake, who married
Johanna, daughter and co-heiress of John Warren of Ightfield, in the reign of
Richard II, had a son called Hugh. He seems to have been the first of the
family that was styled as ‘of Cloverley’.
In
circa 1790, the then owner, Robert Dod (1744–1801), High Sheriff of Shropshire
in 1773, who had married Mary, the daughter of Broughton Whitehall of
Broughton, is said to have rebuilt the house in ‘Doric style’. This perhaps
accounts for Bagshaw’s 1851 description of the house as ‘a commodious brick
mansion, stuccoed, with a front of hewn freestone, and a noble portico
supported by six fluted pillars’. A drawing by
Frederick Peake, shows the front of the house in the early nineteenth century
with a pair of three storey canted bays embracing a lower, recessed, three-bay
block, and united by a single storey Greek Doric colonnade of six columns which
bears out this description. If the Greek Doric colonnade was a part of Robert
Dod’s work then, stylistically, it would have been very early for the
Shrewsbury architects, and might have been undertaken
post 1795 to designs by Thomas Harrison of Chester.
Robert
Dod’s grandson, John Whitehall Dodd (1797–1863), was, like his grandfather,
High Sheriff of Shropshire, serving in 1825, and he was also MP for North
Shropshire in 1849–59. In spite of his public offices,
the agricultural depression of the later nineteenth century affected the family
badly and, in 1863, J.W. Dod retired to Rhyl owing to his debts, dying soon
afterwards.
(Williams, Gareth (2021),
The Country Houses of Shropshire, pages
173 to 176).
Charities. Given by Lady Calveley £10 per annum; R Whitfield £6 per annum; by
persons unknown £10 per annum; Hugh Dod 8s per annum; R Holland 6s; El. Dod 2s
4d (Bishop Gastrell
(1845), Historical Notices on the Diocese of Chester, Notitia Cestriensis page
190).
On 6 December 1385 at Westminster
a Commission was granted to a large number of individuals to levy and collect
from all cities, boroughs and towns, all secular lords of towns and other lay
persons having goods and possessios and from various
other sources, the tenth and fifteenth and moiety of a tenth and fifteenth in
taxation. The list included Thomas Dode and Roger de Cloreley for
Shropshire except Shrewsbury (Fine Rolls of
the reign of Richard II, 1383 to 1391, page 116). This round of taxation
amounting to one and a half tenths and fifteenths followed a combination of
failed military ventures, intense threats of a French invasion, and
deteriorating domestic politics under the young King Richard II. Then again in
1392, Roger de Cloverley was commissioned for tax collection (Fine
Rolls of the reign of Richard II, 1391 to 1399,
page 26).
Roger de Cloreley was then given another tax collecting commission by Henry IV
in 1402 (Fine Rolls of the reign of Henry IV, 1399 to 1405,
page 189).
1430
In the Inquisition of Thomas de Roos,
knight, in assessing his lands in Shropshire and the Adjacent March of Wales, Hugh
Dod of Cloverley was one of the jurors, giving evidence that in respect of
Shropshire and the Adjacent March of Wales, he held no lands or tenements in
demesne or service of the king or any other, but was lately seised of property in demesne as of fee at the
manor of Adderley with Spoonley (The National Archives C 139/50/48 mm.19, 30 and Mapping
the Medieval Countryside, Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Volume 23 (Henry
VI, 1427 to 1432), Folio 541).
Sir Thomas de Ros (or Roos), 8th Baron
Ros of Helmsley, was an English peer and
knight who died on 18 August 1430. He was the son of William de Ros and
Margaret FitzAlan. The FitzAlan
family were the Earls of Arundel and one of the absolute most powerful dynasties
in Shropshire and the Welsh Borders. During the early 1400s, Shropshire was
a highly volatile frontier region, heavily fortified following the Owain Glyndŵr rising. For a young, ambitious knight like
Thomas, maintaining strong administrative and military alignment with
Shropshire's border lords was critical for securing family properties from
Welsh border raids and providing tactical retinues including men-at-arms and
archers, which Shropshire was famous for providing to English campaigns.
Thomas
spent much of his short adult career heavily involved in the Hundred Years' War
in France. He was knighted in 1426 by the young King Henry VI and took part in
major French campaigns. His ties to Shropshire and his English estates were
abruptly cut short on 18 August 1430, when he tragically drowned while
attempting to ford the Marne River in France following a military engagement.
Because his son and heir, Thomas de Ros, 9th Baron, was only three years old at
the time, the Crown stepped in to conduct Inquisitions Post
Mortem to assess and seize control of his vast estate holdings.
1434
Like his father-in-law, Hugh Dodd of Cloreley
was commissioned as a tax collector for the Crown on 1 February 1434. (Fine Rolls of the
reign of Henry VI, 1430
to 1437, page 194).
The order was to levy a Tenth and a Fifteenth. The Fifteenth was assessed upon
lay rural communities, requiring a tax equal to 1/15th, about 6.67%,
of the value of their movable goods and personal property. The Tenth was
targeted at urban boroughs, cities, and royal demesnes, charging a higher
fractional rate of 1/10th or 10% of movable assets. The proceeds of these fractional subsidies were intended by
Parliament to cover urgent public expenditure, primarily the defence of the
realm and funding military campaigns during the later stages of the Hundred
Years' War.
1440
Hugh Dodde of Cloreley was commissioned again for tax collection (Fine Rolls of the reign of Henry VI, 1437
to 1445, page 146).
1443
In the Inquisition of John Tiptoft, knight, Lord Tiptoft and Powis, in assessing his lands in Shropshire and
the Adjacent March of Wales, Hugh Dod of Cloverley was one of the
jurors, hiving evidence on 13 February 1443 that he died on 20 February 1442;
that John Typtoft, aged 17 was his son and heir and that he held no lands or
tenements in demesne or in service of the king or of any other (The National Archives E 149/174/2 m. 6 and Mapping
the Medieval Countryside, Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Volume 26 (Henry
VI, 1442 to 1447), Folio 96).
Sir John Tiptoft, 1st Baron Tiptoft (c
1375 to 27 January 1443, though often associated with the 1442/3 fiscal year in
administrative records) was a highly prominent English statesman, diplomat, and
landowner who served as Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord High Treasurer, and
Chief Butler of England. His primary connection to Shropshire and his adoption
of the title and of Powis stemmed entirely from his strategic second
marriage to Joyce Cherleton, the daughter and co-heiress of Edward Cherleton,
5th Baron Cherleton of Powis. When Edward Cherleton
died in March 1421, his vast estates in Shropshire and the bordering Marches
were split between his two daughters, Joan and Joyce. Tiptoft
married Joyce by royal licence in February 1422. Through her, he acquired a major
share of the traditional Cherleton lands located both
within Shropshire proper and along its highly volatile Welsh borderland.
Managing land in Shropshire during the early fifteenth century
required aggressive political manoeuvring due to its proximity to Wales. Tiptoft used the immense revenues from his newly acquired
Shropshire, Cambridgeshire, and Hampshire estates to establish himself as one
of the wealthiest peers in England.
His Shropshire and Marcher interests were passed down to his only son,
John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester, the infamous Butcher of England.
The younger Tiptoft would eventually formalise the
family's hold over these western lands when he was later summoned to parliament
as John de Charleton de Powys.
John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester, the son of the Lord Tiptoft who died in 1442, was dubbed the Butcher of
England due to his unprecedented brutality, use of torture, and horrific
execution methods while serving as Edward IV's chief enforcer during the Wars
of the Roses. In 1470, Tiptoft presided over the trial
of a group of Lancastrian rebels captured at sea. He ordered twenty of them to
be hanged, drawn, and quartered, a standard medieval punishment for treason.
However, he went a step further, instructing that their severed heads and
quartered limbs be impaled upside down on sharp stakes. This public display of
impalement was deeply shocking to the English public, violating the
contemporary standards of Christian decency regarding the dead. Tiptoft's cruelty ensured he had no friends when the
political tides turned. When the Lancastrians briefly restored Henry VI to the
throne in the autumn of 1470, Tiptoft was found
hiding in a forest, abandoned by his allies.
1446
Hugh Dodde of Cloreley was commissioned again for tax collection (Fine Rolls of the reign of Henry VI, 1445
to 1452, pages 35).
1450
Hugh Dod may have lived until
about 1450.