Research Notes:

John le Strange (III) must have been about forty years of age when he did homage for his lands to King Henry III on January 20, 1234. He could hardly have been nineteen or twenty when...he was employed on August 24, 1212, to convoy to King John the sum of £60, the proceeds of stores sold by the King's orders at Shrewsbury. Two years later, viz. in 1214,... he was with King John in Poitou, helping in the attempt to recover the lost continental provinces; and in 1219 he was ordered to hold an inquisition of the Shropshire forests at Shrewsbury.... In 1230, John le Strange [was] with Henry III in Brittany, Anjou, Poitou and Gascony, when the King took fealty of the nobles of those provinces. [By] direct granted from the King, he [became] lord of Wrockwardine during his father's lifetime [who] towards the close of his life, had procured from the King a grant in fee of the manor of Wrockwardine to his son, viz. in the year 1231. Shortly after this, John le Strange tercius, son of John le Strange, concedes to Wombridge Priory the donation which his father had made in the bosc of Wombridge. Another deed, which Eyton considers to be nearly contemporary, relates to the same grant, and mentions the name of John's wife: 'John le Strange tercius, for the soul's health of himself, his wife Lucia, and his father, gives to the Priory all such assarts and boscs as it possessed by concession of his father.'... The name of his wife is mentioned again in another undated deed... by which John, son of John le Strange, and Lucy his wife gave to the abbot of Lilleshall their right of patronage of the church of Holme-next-the-Sea, in Norfolk.

The Close Rolls contain several entries showing the service of John (III) about this period. On December 23, 1232, a mandate was sent to him to release certain hostages. On September 3 of the following year he appears as surety for the faithful service of Galfridus de Baucis; and on July 1, 1234, a mandate issued to him, in conjunction with John de Monmouth, Henry de Audley, Thomas Corbet, and John fitz Alan, to take possession of the castles on the Marches now in the hands of Peter de Rivaux, to lay siege to them if necessary, and to give them to 'Waleranum Teutonicum,' so as to avoid the risk of them falling into the hands of the King of France or other the King's enemies....

At Michaelmas, 1235, John appears again in office as constable of Montgomery, with a salary of 200 marks a year, one-fourth of which had recently be paid by the Sheriff of Shropshire.... The Close Rolls of November 3, 1235, contain a notification, addressed to John as constable of Montgomery, that the King, in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow bishops, had ordered tithe to be levied on hay and mills throughout the kingdom; Le Strange was therefore directed to render such tithe henceforth to the church of Montgomery.

The Patent Rolls of 1236 contain a grant, dated July 9, at Tewkesbury, to John le Strange, constable of Montgomery, of protection from all lawsuits so long as he continues to be constable of that castle. Another entry dated two days later, ratifies a truce for one year between the King and Llewelyn, sworn to by John le Strange and two others. On March 6 previous le Strange had been associated by the King with the Bishop of Hereford, the Prior of Wenlock, and others, to act as arbitrators as to the compensation to Llewelyn, Prince of Aberfraw, and Morgan of Caerleon for the aggressions made against them during the truce by the Earl of Gloucester as regards the castle of Caerleon.... It is worthy of note that in this and similar documents the King never acknowledges Llewelyn as Prince of Wales, but always styles him Prince of Aberfraw, or lord of Snowdon.

On October 24, 1236, le Strange was appointed to the office of Sheriff of the counties of Salop and Stafford; and, in consequence of this the retiring Sheriff, Robert de la Hay, was, on November 14, ordered to deliver over to him custody of the King's castles of Bridgnorth and Shrewsbury....

The truce with the Welsh prince had only been made for one year, but in June, 1237, negotiations for its prolongation were on foot. Successive Kings of England had not been able to effect any lasting conquest in North Wales, where they were frequently beaten back; they contented themselves with receiving a nominal homage, which spared them the disgrace of appearing to accept defeat, but gave them no effective control over the country. Llewelyn the Great, though he had married King John's illegitimate daughter Joan, did not allow this to stand in his way; he seized his opportunity when England was weak and divided by dissensions between the Crown and the barons, and by allying himself first with one side and then with the other, made his power felt right down to southern Wales, and created a sense of national unity which had been previously wanting, and which was taken up by his grandson in the reign of Edward I.

On June 15, 1237, notification was sent to David, the King's nephew, son of Llewelyn, that, in consequence of the death of the Earl of Chester, the King had directed Henry de Audley to stay in Chester, and had appointed John le Strange in his place to conduct David to Worcester. On the following day the King wrote to Llewelyn that le Strange and others would conduct his envoys from Shewsbury to Worcester to meet the King there on midsummer day. The meeting, however, was postponed, in consequence of the King having to go to Dover to meet the legate; a mandate was sent to John le Strange, on July 16, that he need not come, as Henry de Audley... was coming in person. The legate whom Henry had gone to meet was Cardinal Otho, invited by the King, much to the discontent of both clergy and laity. All classes were suffering under the intolerable exactions of the papal see; the country was flooded with foreign eclesiastics, who occupied many of the best benefices; grievous burdens, amounting at one time to a third of the revenues of English benefices for three years, were laid on the clergy, and the laity were harassed by the growing practice of carrying lawsuits to the Courts of Rome: moreover, the revenues of the State were seriously diminished by the handing over of large tracts of land to religious houses, which, to a greater extent, were free from the burdens that the laity had to bear....

The custody of the Lincolnshire manor of Bernoreby? had been given by the King to John le Strange on December 29, 1238, to be held by him during the minority of the heir of John fitz Philip, of Bobbington, on the borders of Staffordshire and Salop. Later on the custody of all of the lands of fitz Philip was committed to him; he appears to have enjoyed them until about the year 1247... A mandate was sent to the Sheriff of Salop and Stafford on November 25, 1243, to distrain on John le Strange, to make him give an account of the issues of the lands of John fitz Philip which were in his custody. As late as Michaelmas, 1261, his debts to the Crown, long in arrear, included an item of £153 4s. 4½d., a balance of an account of the issues of the lands of John fitz Philip as rendered in 1247.... ¹

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"…Johannes Extraneus junior" to enquire into the state of the forests "de comitatu Salopie" dated [Jul] 1219. ²