DRAPER, Gregory

A merchant and mercer from the parish of St. Mary Coslany, Draper was admitted to the freedom of Norwich in 1409-10.9 Norwich ‘Old Free bk.’, NCR 17c, f. 42; Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Brosyard, f. 342. On one occasion Draper was referred to as ‘of Norwich, merchant, alias George [sic] Loder of Norwich, loder’ (KB9/272/2), but this is the only known example of this alias being used. He was a man of considerable local standing (described as a ‘nobleman’ in a papal indult of February 1429 licensing him and his wife to keep a portable altar),10 CPL, viii. 128. and his affairs extended beyond Norfolk. In the late 1420s, for example, he sued Richard Bush* in the Exchequer, claiming that in September 1423 Bush, then one of the bailiffs of Cambridge, had ordered the seizure of his sword and scabbard. When Bush finally responded to this suit in Trinity term 1431, he said that he had confiscated the sword because Draper, who had come to Cambridge to sell woollen cloth, had failed to pay ‘stalpeny’, a local toll of 1d.11 E13/138, rot. 12d (continued on rot. 1d). Before the end of the 1430s, Draper sued a merchant from Coventry for a debt of £28,12 CPR, 1436-41, p. 216. and he sold cloth to Westminster abbey in 1439-40. He subsequently fell out with the abbot and monks, alleging that they still owed him £8 for their purchases. Eventually he went to law against the abbot in the court of common pleas, only for his case to fail in 1452.13 CP40/765, rot. 337. Also in the early 1450s, Draper was at odds with Thomas Calbras, a member of the royal household and a burgess of Great Yarmouth, whom he had sued for a debt of £12.14 CPR, 1446-52, p. 398.

Draper was playing an active part in the affairs of his city by December 1422, when he was one of those given the task of preparing a reception for Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, whom the city was expecting to visit. His first civic office was that of treasurer, to which he was appointed in 1423. In 1426, his fellow citizens chose him to participate in negotiations with representatives of the prior of Norwich, with whom they were engaged in a long-running jurisdictional dispute, and to help supervise the building of a new water mill for the city.15 Norwich assembly roll, 1420-6, NCR 8d. He served as sheriff in 1428-9 and had become an alderman for the ward of Ultra Aquam by the early 1430s. In 1435-6, he and Peter Brasier conveyed a sum of £100 the city had agreed to lend the King to London, but some five years later the city lost much of the goodwill it had gained from the loan because it authorized him and others to pursue a suit in the Exchequer for the money’s return.16 Chamberlains’ accts. NCR 18a, f. 213v; assembly bk. 16d, f. 14. In June 1437 he was among ten citizens called before the royal council and ordered (under the pain of the heavy penalty of £1,000 each) to remain in London until permitted to leave. The summons was almost certainly connected with the disputed mayoral election of the previous month, since Draper’s nine associates were all leading opponents of Thomas Wetherby* , who had accused them of stirring up a riot to prevent him and his allies from taking part in the election.17 PPC, v. 33; KB9/229/1/106. A few years later, ‘William Gery’ (possibly a scribal error for Wetherby’s supporter, William Grey) sued Draper and others for assault: CP40/727, rot. 388. The Crown responded to the trouble at the election by confiscating Norwich’s liberties, but the men called before the council continued to participate in civic affairs. Chosen in October 1437 to take part in negotiations aimed at settling a quarrel between the city and the prioress of Carrow,18 Assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 4v. in the following spring Draper was a member of a deputation that went to London to seek the good grace of the King and certain lords of the council, and to defend various suits brought against the city.19 Ibid. f. 9.

Draper was embroiled in further controversies during the early 1440s. In July 1441 the prior of Norwich, an ally of both Wetherby and the affinity of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, began legal proceedings against him and other leading citizens for trespass and contempt, and the abbot of Wendling brought a similar action.20 KB9/240/27d. The following October, the mayor, William Ashwell*, sheriffs and aldermen agreed to submit all their jurisdictional disputes with the prior and other ecclesiastical dignitaries to the earl’s arbitration.21 P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order, 194. Even if the city had little choice but to come to this decision, Draper had personal reasons to find it unpalatable, since by then he was quarrelling with Nicholas Ovy, a lawyer employed by the de la Poles.22 KB9/118/2, no. 17. Through this dispute, both he and Ovy spent a period of confinement (probably very brief) in the Marshalsea during Michaelmas term 1441. While prisoner, each took the opportunity to sue each other in the court of King’s bench. Draper and two co-plaintiffs, Robert Toppe* and John Gerard II*, alleged that Ovy had broken into their house and close at Fishley, roughly half way between Norwich and Great Yarmouth, on 29 Sept. that year. In his suit, brought against Draper alone, Ovy claimed that Draper had broken into his house and close there (apparently the same property) on the following 9 Oct. Pleadings resumed on 29 Feb. 1442, by which date Draper and Gerard were at Westminster, representing Norwich as its MPs in the Parliament of that year. In response to the suit of Draper and his associates, Ovy pleaded that the property in dispute was part of the manor of Fishley, of which he had obtained a ten-year lease from Robert Wychingham, at Michaelmas 1440. Draper and his co-plaintiffs countered that Ovy had surrendered his lease on the following 4 Feb., after which Wychingham had conveyed away the manor to them, a claim that also constituted their defence in his suit against them. Later, on 22 June 1443, a jury upheld Draper’s version of events. It also assessed the damages incurred by Draper, Toppe and Gerard at 40 marks although by this stage they had already forsworn any further action against their opponent.23 KB27/723, rot. 8; 724, rot. 41d. It is impossible to determine the exact nature of Draper’s interest at Fishley, but it seems likely that he was Wychingham’s feoffee or mortgagee, since Wychingham died seised of the manor in 1451.24 C139/141/3.

The outcome of the dispute with Ovy can have come as little consolation to Draper, given that by now the quarrel with the prior of Norwich had ended in dramatic defeat for him and his fellow citizens. In April 1442, he and six other aldermen had bound themselves in £40 each to the prior, to guarantee that the city would accept the arbitration of the earl of Suffolk.25 Norwich docs. relating to city’s legal disputes, c.1442, NCR 9c/13. Yet the earl’s award, made some six weeks later, had proved highly unpalatable. The city was to tear down certain of its mills, since these were prejudicial to the interests of the prior and the abbot of St. Benet of Hulme, and the prior was to enjoy reasonable jurisdictional rights in Norwich. The citizens had reacted by seeking to wriggle out of the award, prompting the prior to sue Draper and the six aldermen who had put their names to the bond in the common pleas.26 Maddern, 194-5; CP40/727, rot. 372; 729, rots. 86d, 517d. The city had yet to accept the award when the corporation met on 25 Jan. 1443, to discuss whether to seal it. Passions ran high at this assembly, which ended in chaos after a group of citizens had seized the common seal to forestall any such sealing and marched upon the priory. In response to the resulting disturbances, subsequently known as ‘Gladman’s Insurrection’, the Crown confiscated the city’s liberties for a second time and appointed Sir John Clifton its governor.27 Maddern, 196-7. It is likely that Draper had played some part in the disorder. In its wake he, along with several other prominent citizens who had certainly been involved, appeared before an investigating commission of oyer and terminer headed by (Sir) John Fortescue*,28 KB9/84/2/49. and he lost his office of j.p. In early 1444, however, he was a member of a deputation which went to London to seek the return of the liberties (not in fact restored until November 1447),29 Chamberlains’ accts. NCR 18a, f. 226. and on one occasion in Michaelmas 1445-6 he was on a panel of citizens entrusted with governing Norwich during Clifton’s temporary absence.30 Recs. Norwich, ii. 70.

Another member of the panel was Draper’s associate, John Gerard, with whom Draper had gained election to the Commons of 1442, and who was again his fellow MP in the Parliament of 1447. Gerard was already an experienced parliamentarian by 1442, so he probably provided Draper, then a newcomer to the Commons, with much useful guidance. Presumably, they took a keen interest in the statute of 1442 regulating the weaving of worsted cloth in Norwich and Norfolk.31 PROME, xi. 375-6. The dispute with Ovy is not the only evidence that Draper and Gerard enjoyed a good relationship outside Parliament. For example, Gerard stood surety in September 1444 when Draper was obliged to provide guarantees that he would keep the peace towards a fellow merchant, Robert Hacford, and Gerard’s widow appointed Draper one of her executors of her will of 1451.32 Norwich mayor’s ct. bk., 1425-1510, NCR 16a, p. 134; Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, ff. 191v-192. Draper was still quarrelling with Hacford in Oct. 1448 when John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, ordered the two men to put their differences to a panel of arbitrators, of whom Gerard was one: NCR 16a, p. 80.

Draper commenced his first term as mayor of Norwich a little over two years after leaving the Parliament of 1447. This term coincided with a period of national political crisis, resulting in the impeachment, exile and death of the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, by then duke of Suffolk. The duke’s downfall encouraged East Anglian opponents of the de la Pole affinity to seek redress against his followers, and the citizens of Norwich were ready with a list of their own particular grievances when a commission of oyer and terminer arrived in Norfolk in the autumn of 1450. They accused the duke of ‘hevy lordschepp’ and claimed that members of his affinity had continued to oppress the city even after Draper, John Gerard and others had on one occasion tried to appease him by paying him 100 marks and his retainer, Sir Thomas Tuddenham*, £20.33 Norf. Archaeology, i. 295-9. The oyer and terminer commissioners took a number of indictments against Tuddenham and other de la Pole men from several Norwich juries. One of these stated that Tuddenham, John Heydon* and their associates had maintained the suit brought by the prior of Norwich against Draper and other citizens in 1441. Another alleged that Heydon and John Wymondham* had procured a false indictment charging Draper and others with having taken livestock from Wymondham’s park at Gressenhall in October 1439.34 KB9/267/24; 272/2. The plea rolls of King’s bench show that in the same month the earl of Suffolk had sued Draper and several associates for menacing his servant, William Prentys. The suit had come to pleadings in Michaelmas term 1442 when Draper, denying the use of threatening behaviour, had accused Prentys of connivance in the wrongful indictment.35 KB27/723, rot. 25d; 726, rot. 85.

When Draper was re-elected mayor in the mid 1450s, Norwich was no longer afflicted by the serious internal strife of previous decades and the later years of his career were uncontroversial. In accordance with recently established practice, he began a term as alderman of guild of St. George after completing this second term as mayor.36 Recs. Gild St. George, Norwich (Norf. Rec. Soc. ix), 13. During this term, the corporation acknowledged that it owed him some £30, although he waived his right to just over half this sum.37 Assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 30. It is likely that part of the debt arose from a loan of seven marks he had given the city in the spring of 1453, to help it prepare a suitable reception for a visit by Queen Margaret of Anjou.38 ‘Old Free Bk.’, NCR 17c, f. 18v. (He was still owed money in the early 1460s, when it was decided that he, Robert Toppe and William Henstead* should have the profits of the common quay for a year so that they could recover the debts which the city owed them.)39 Assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 48; chamberlains’ acct, 1463-4, NCR 7e. In October 1457, Draper was among those chosen to raise a force of 200 men the corporation had agreed to send to the aid of Great Yarmouth, under threat from French naval attack, and to tax the city’s inhabitants for these soldiers’ costs and wages.40 Assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 34. In the following July the Crown included him on a commission established to survey Norwich’s walls and clear out its ditches and rivers. Draper was still active in 1460 and in February that year the corporation gave him and other aldermen the task of taxing the city’s inhabitants so that the city, obliged to respond to an anti-Yorkist commission of array, could finance a force for the King.41 Ibid. f. 42v. In the following September (by which date the Yorkists had seized control of the government) he attested the election of Norwich’s MPs to the Parliament which opened at Westminster that autumn. He is not known to have taken any further part in public affairs, although (in common with others who held the rank) he held the office of alderman for life.

Draper died in April or May 1464 and was buried in the then uncompleted south transept of the church of St. Mary Coslany. He left two wills, of which one was nuncupative and dated 3 Apr. and the other a longer version dated the 6th.42 Regs. Brosyard, f. 342; Betyns, ff. 90-92. It is possible that he had been near death at the earlier date but had rallied sufficiently to make a fuller will three days later. Yet this suggestion does not explain why the same ecclesiastical court (the consistory court of the diocese of Norwich) proved both wills (on 8 and 15 Oct. 1464 respectively), particularly since the second will augmented rather than altered the first. He bequeathed 6s. 8d. to the high altar of St. Mary’s, and contributed a further 26s. 8d. towards the completion of the church’s south transept, and he asked a chaplain to sing for his soul there for six years. His mercer’s mark is still visible in one of the windows at St. Mary’s as well as on the stonework outside.43 Cozens-Hardy and Kent, 25. He also left two marks to the city’s Dominicans and 20s. to each of its Fransiscan, Augustinian and Carmelite friaries. Among other beneficiaries of his will were the monks at Flixton, Suffolk, and a number of parish churches in Norfolk, including those at South Elmham, Colton, Morton and Honingham. It is possible that he held lands in Honingham (several miles to the north-west of Norwich), since in the late 1450s he had begun an action for trespass against John Blakeney*, a resident of that parish.44 KB27/783, rot. 55d. Whatever the case, it is likely that he died at Honingham, since that was where he made his second will and where John Norman, esquire, who had married his daughter, Joan, owned property.45 Blomefield, ii. 449. The MP’s now lost memorial brass depicted no fewer than 12 children but none of Joan’s brothers and sisters featured in his wills, so it is possible that they had all died at a young age. Draper left the Normans a messuage with buildings, gardens and appurtenances in St. Mary Coslany, upon condition that they provided another chaplain to sing in St. Mary’s for 15 months, to the benefit of the souls of himself, his already dead wife, Alice, and all his benefactors. Valued at £14 p.a. in 1451 for taxation purposes,46 R. Virgoe, ‘Norwich taxation list of 1451’, Norf. Archaeology, xl. 151. his real property included holdings outside Norwich, for he left several pieces of meadow in Attleborough to John Norman and another meadow in Morton to Joan. As for any of his lands not specifically mentioned in his wills, he instructed his executors to sell them and to use the money raised for charitable purposes and for performing their duties. From his personal estate, Draper bequeathed Joan a belt gilded with silver, one of the precious stones which had belonged to her mother, his best psalter and a piece of linen cloth. He provided for her six children by John Norman, leaving money towards the schooling of the couple’s two sons and other sums and various household items to their four daughters, two of whom were already married. He also made bequests to his godsons, of whom there were several, as well as quite a number of servants and former servants, including his clerk, Hugh Gonolf, scrivener of Norwich. In the first will, he appointed the two Normans and the Norwich mercer, John Welles, to whom he left a silver chest, as his executors; in the second, he named another Norwich citizen, Richard Albon, in the place of Welles, who was nevertheless to keep the chest. The 18th-century antiquary, Francis Blomefield, saw Draper’s brass while it was still in situ and noted the following inscription. Curiously, it recorded that he died on vi. kal. Apr. [27 Mar.] 1464, several days before the date of his first will:

Ecce sub hoc Lapide Gregorius extat humatus

Quondam Mercator pius ac Jnopum Relevator

Consensu Turbe Maior bis in hac fuit urbe

Annis Mo Co quarter decies ser bis quoque binis

Sexto Kalendarium fuit Aprilis sibi finis

Hic quisquis steteris ipsum precibus memor eris

Sponsum defunctam simul Aliciam sibi Junctam.47 Blomefield, iv. 189.