CLIFTON, John

Although notaries were rarely elected to Parliament, John Clifton is almost certainly to be identified with the notary public, who, in 1417, was in the service of Philip Repingdon, bishop of Lincoln.2 Reg. Repingdon, i (Lincoln Rec. Soc. lvii), p. xvi; iii (ibid. lxxiv), no. 303. He combined his notarial career with an active role in the administration of the city. As early as 1413 he was commissioned as a royal tax collector there; he was present at three common congregations between November 1421 and September 1423; and as sheriff he conducted the parliamentary election of January 1426.3 CFR, xiv. 29; Lincs. AO, Lincoln city recs., White bk. L1/3/1, ff. 2v, 3v, 5; C219/13/4. On 4 Oct. 1426, shortly after his term as sheriff, he was vainly sued in the Exchequer of pleas for damages of £40 by John Gressington and his wife Anne, who claimed that, by colour of his office, he had assaulted Anne in the previous August.4 E13/137, rots. 1, 7, 9d. The case had no adverse effect on his career. He attested his first election return in 1427, when Gressington was also among the attestors, and was himself returned two years later. He was again an attestor on 1 Jan. 1431, when he stood pledge for Robert Walsh*, his fellow MP in 1429. 5 C219/13/5, 14/1, 2. His administrative career culminated and ended with his appointment to the mayoralty in 1432. In Michaelmas term 1435, styled as ‘once of Lincoln, notary’, he was defending an action for a debt of £2 against Richard Duffield*, and he was still alive in November 1441 when, as ‘of Lincoln, clerk’, he sued out a pardon of outlawry on a London plea of trespass.6 CP40/699, rot. 376d; CPR, 1441-6, p. 9.

On at least two occasions, Clifton was a defendant in Chancery, both in connexion with his trade as a notary and scrivener. At some date between 1432 and 1443 a fellow Lincoln citizen, John Newecome, complained he had delivered three obligations to him to draw up a letter of attorney, but that our MP had refused either to surrender them or to provide the letter. More interestingly, in an earlier suit, to be dated between 1417 and 1424, it was claimed that, as the proctor of a clerk, John Ouresby, he had contravened statute by facilitating an action in the Roman curia against two former sheriffs of the city.7 C1/5/146, 10/142.

The only reference to Clifton’s property holdings comes from Bishop Gray’s visitation of the cathedral in April 1432: from this it appears that he and two other leading citizens were witholding rents due to the fabrica ecclesiae, and, to avoid distraint, were blocking the entries of their tenements.8 Vis. Religious Houses Diocese of Lincoln (Lincoln Rec. Soc. vii), 142.