John Harpeden I

Sir John Harpeden (or Harpsden; French: Jean Harpedenne) was an English knight and administrator who served Edward III of England in France during the Hundred Years' War.

When the lieutenant was returning to England in September 1371, he left the castle of La Roche-sur-Yon in the joint possession of John Harpeden, Thomas Percy and Renaud de Vivonne.

They agreed to pay for its upkeep out of their own revenues and to render an annual rent of 500 marks to the Edward, Duke of Aquitaine, which they could raise from the forfeitures of traitors and the profits of raiding French territory.

When the flotilla of the Earl of Pembroke was blockaded in La Rochelle by a Castilian fleet, he worked through the night of 22/23 June to procure reinforcements.

According to a rumour, certainly apocryphal, he was granted his freedom because he had volunteered to defend the divinity of Christ in single combat against two "Ethiopian" heathens.

[7] When the French went on the offensive late in the summer of 1387, Harpeden organized the simultaneous defence of the Gironde from a royal invasion and the Agenais from the Count of Armagnac.