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.