Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cantebrig, John de
CANTEBRIG or CAMBRIDGE, JOHN de (d. 1335), judge, was of a Cambridge family, whence he took his name, and is said to have been son to Thomas Cantebrig, a judge of the exchequer under Edward II. He was M.P. for Cambridgeshire in 1321 and subsequent years, and earlier was in several judicial commissions for the county. In the last years of Edward II and early years of Edward III he is named as counsel in the year books. In 1330 he became king's serjeant, and was in the commission for Northamptonshire, and on 22 Oct. of that year was made a knight ‘tanquam banerettus,’ with a grant for his robes of investiture out of the king's wardrobe. On 18 Jan. 1331 he was made a justice of the common pleas, along with Robert de Malberthorpe and John Inge, and received a new patent on 30 Jan. 1334. No fines are levied before him after Michaelmas term 1334. He died in 1335. He had large property in and around Cambridge, and was twice alderman of St. Mary's guild, to which, in 1311, and by his will, he gave Stone Hall, in St. Michael's, on the site of part of Caius College, with thirty-five tenements and a hundred acres of land in Cambridge and Nuneham, and a pix of silver-gilt, weighing seventy-eight ounces. He was seneschal to the abbot of St. Albans in 1331.
[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Masters's History of C. C. C. Cambridge; Le Keux's Memorials of Cambridge; Fuller's University of Cambridge, 69; Newcome's S. Albans, 223; Abbr. Rot. Orig. 95; Parl. Writs.]