1376.
Served the office of Sheriff for the county of Warwick, in 1379, and was
successively returned to serve in Parliament for the counties of
Warwick, Bedford, and Buckingham. He married the daughter of William de
la Planch, by whom he had no issue. She afterwards married the Lord
Clinton, retained the manor of Birmingham as her dower, and lived to the
year 1424.
It does not appear in this illustrious family, that the regular line of
descent, from father to son, was ever broken, from the time of the
Saxons, 'till 1390. This Sir John left a brother, Sir Thomas de
Birmingham, heir at law, who enjoyed the bulk of his brother's fortune;
but was not to possess the manor of Birmingham 'till the widow's death,
which not happening 'till after his own, he never enjoyed it.
The Lord Clinton and his Lady seem to have occupied the Manor-house; and
Sir Thomas, unwilling to quit the place of his affections and of his
nativity, erected a castle for himself at Worstone, near the Sand-pits,
joining the Ikenield-street; street; where, though the building is
totally gone, the vestiges of its liquid security are yet complete. This
Sir Thomas enjoyed several public offices, and figured in the style of
his ancestors. He left a daughter, who married Thomas de la Roche, and
from this marriage sprang two daughters; the eldest of which married
Edmund, Lord Ferrers of Chartley, who, at the decease of Sir John's
widow, inherited the manor, and occupied the Manor house. There yet
stands a building on the North-east side of the Moat, erected by this
Lord Ferrers, with his arms in the timbers of the ceiling, and the
crest, a horse-shoe.
I take this house to be the oldest in Birmingham, though it hath not
that appearance; having stood about 350 years.
By an entail of the manor upon the male line, the Lady Ferrers seems to
have quitted her title in favor of a second cousin, a descendant of
William de Birmingham, brother to Sir Fouk.