DROLLE, John

A mercer, Drolle became a freeman of Norwich in 1428-9.4 Norwich city recs., ‘Old Free bk.’, NCR 17c, f. 47. He originated from the vicinity of South Elmham in east Suffolk, where another John Drolle was active in the late 1370s. In all likelihood, the elder John was the MP’s grandfather, for William Drolle, son of John, received a quitclaim of lands at South Elmham in 1407. The MP retained interests in his native county, receiving conveyances of property in Homersfield, Sancroft, Flixton and South Elmham in the second half of the 1430s.5 Suff. RO (Lowestoft), Adair mss, HA12/B2/1/3; HA12/B2/3/14, 55, 60. Yet he was never a substantial landowner, for subsidy commissioners valued his real property at just £6 p.a. in 1451.6 R. Virgoe, ‘Norwich taxation list of 1451’, Norf. Archaeology, xl. 150.

At Norwich, Drolle was an office-holder by 1440, when he became a constable of Wymer ward. The early 1440s were a turbulent time for the city, and he and other leading citizens had formally to submit to the Crown in January 1443, following disturbances directed against Norwich cathedral priory.7 Norwich city recs., ‘Liber Albus’, NCR 17a, f. 71. According to a subsequent indictment, he was an instigator of the disorder, an accusation that is impossible to verify.8 KB9/84/1. Reacting to the riots, subsequently known as ‘Gladman’s Insurrection’, the King confiscated the city’s liberties and appointed Sir John Clifton its governor. Later, at the beginning of 1444, the citizens decided to send Thomas Ingham*, Gregory Draper* and Drolle to the King and his council to seek the restoration of the lost privileges. The deputation enjoyed Clifton’s support (he provided a loan of nine marks to cover its costs), but did not achieve its aim, since the liberties were not regained until late 1447.9 Norwich city recs., chamberlains’ accts., 1384-1448, NCR 18a, f. 226; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 223-4.

Before the end of the same decade, Drolle served a term as one of the sheriffs of Norwich and he had become an alderman by 1452. In May the following year, he was nominated for the office of mayor alongside his former co-sheriff, Richard Brown II*, emerging as the successful candidate. While he was mayor, Queen Margaret of Anjou visited Norwich (perhaps while on pilgrimage to Walsingham to give thanks for her pregnancy), and he was among those who lent money, in his case six marks, towards preparing a suitable reception for her.10 ‘Old Free bk.’, NCR 17c, f. 18v. As mayor he was also one of the city’s j.p.s, and in accordance with recently established convention he remained on the bench and began a term as alderman of guild of St. George (of which he was already a common councillor), after completing his term.11 Recs. Norwich ed. Hudson and Tingey, i. 305n; Recs. Gild St. George, Norwich (Norf. Rec. Soc. ix), 13. A year after stepping down as mayor, Drolle gained election to the Parliament of 1455. Parliament dissolved in March 1456 and, a few months later, he faced legal proceedings in the Exchequer. The Crown alleged that, while mayor, he and the sheriffs had failed to act upon a commission directing them to collect Norwich’s share of a loan of £100 that the King expected from the city and Great Yarmouth. Drolle and the former sheriffs, Edward Cutler* and John Clerk, claimed that the commission had never come into their hands in the first place, and at a congregation on 25 June their fellow citizens vouched to cover the cost of any legal penalties brought against them. They also agreed that the three men should ride to London in the coming Michaelmas term to make their excuses and that the common council should raise the sum owed to the King from the community’s goods.12 PROME, xii. 267; assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 28v. Perhaps in recognition of the support he had received in the matter, at the end of 1456 Drolle agreed to forgo his claim to 20s. the city owed him.13 Assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 30.

After the mid 1450s, Drolle did not hold any major office, other than that of alderman, but he was active in civic affairs for several more years. In 1457, he was one of those chosen to raise a force of 200 men Norwich had agreed to send to the aid of Great Yarmouth, then under threat from enemy naval attacks, and to tax the city’s inhabitants for these soldiers’ costs and wages for eight days.14 Ibid. f. 34. He helped to assess another local tax in early 1460, to finance a force the city was assembling in response to an anti-Yorkist commission of array, as well as subsequent levies imposed by the civic authorities after Edward IV had seized the throne. These included a tax to pay for the soldiers Edward had demanded within days of his accession in March 1461, and another levied in the following summer, to cover the costs of an anticipated royal visit.15 Ibid. ff. 42, 48, 50, 53v. Although expected, Edward does not appear to have visited Norfolk in 1461: see C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 197. During the early 1460s Drolle was also involved in negotiations intended to settle the differences which then existed between the city and Norwich priory, and occupied with his responsibilities as an executor of Richard Brown, whose widow also made him one of her executors before her death in 1465.16 Assembly bk. NCR 16d, ff. 46, 52, 57v; Norwich city recs., ct. roll, 1461-83, NCR 1/19, m. 6; Norwich consist. ct. Reg. Cobald, ff. 68-69; PCC 23 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 177v-178v).

By now, Drolle was nearing the end of his own life. Dated 10 Jan. 1468, his will was proved on the following 11 Mar.17 Reg. Betyns, ff. 135-6. He asked to be buried in the Lady chapel of St. Andrew’s church, Norwich, where Agnes, his first wife lay, and where he requested a chantry priest to sing for 20 years for himself, Agnes and all his friends. He left the church £20 for a new south porch, several altar cloths and vestments and various ‘renters’ or ‘tenantries’ which he owned in St. Andrew’s parish, upon condition that the parishioners kept his obit on Passion Sunday with dirige and, on the following day, a mass for the souls of himself, Agnes and their parents. Among his bequests to institutions and individuals in Norwich, he left 20 marks to each of the four friaries, a silver cross to the college of St. Mary in the Field (where Nicholas Derman, probably a relative, had been chancellor in the 1430s),18 CPL, viii. 140. and 6s. 8d. to the prisoners confined in the city’s guildhall and castle. As for his second wife, another Agnes, Drolle assigned his ‘place’ in Norwich (previously the property of Robert Seman) and a garden in ‘Cokey Lane’ to her to hold for life, after which they were to be put up for sale. He also left her 100 marks in cash, 100 marks’ worth of wares and various items of plate and household ‘stuff’. Other beneficiaries of the will included Drolle’s sister, Alice, his apprentice, Thomas Gardener, and a boy named William Seman, presumably a relative of Robert. Drolle left to each of Alice and Gardener ten marks’ worth of wares, although he expected the latter to complete his apprenticeship satisfactorily before receiving his bequest. As for Seman, the executors were to provide him with two years’ worth of schooling, and to give him five marks when he reached the age of 24. Away from Norwich, Drolle was particularly generous to the nuns at Flixton in Suffolk. Apart from bequeathing them £10 for repair of their cloister, a coverlet of tapestry work and a book called ‘Bonauentur’,19 Perhaps Speculum vitae Christi, attributed to St. Bonaventura and translated into English by Nicholas Love. In the early 15th cent. the church licensed Love’s work for reading by devout laity and to the confutation of heretics and Lollards: C.E. Moreton, ‘The “Library” of a Late-Fifteenth-Century Lawyer’, The Library, ser. 6, xiii. 345. he left 4s. to the prioress, the same sum to one of the sisters, and 2s. and a small bowl to each of the other nuns. He also made bequests to the parish churches at Homersfield, South Elmham, Blythborough, Halesworth, Kessingland, Beccles and Barnham in the same county. It is likely that Drolle had no children of his own when he died; certainly none features in the will. He appointed two executors, his wife and the priest, Henry Cossey, evidently a relative. Cossey was master of Rushford College, Norfolk, and afterwards of Gonville Hall, Cambridge.20 VCH Norf. ii. 459.

After Drolle’s death, the Norwich authorities approached Cossey and Agnes about a plan to found a chapel in the guildhall.21 Assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 77. Presumably, they were seeking contributions from the MP’s estate, but it is impossible to tell whether his executors contributed to the project. As Drolle’s executor, Cossey was also involved in a Chancery suit brought by John Barett. Barett, the executor of Edmund Sperhawke, late parson of Homersfield, claimed that Cossey had gained possession of a bond for £20 that Drolle had given Sperhawke, as a security for a debt the priest was now refusing to honour.22 C1/37/37. Agnes Drolle died in 1473, having made her will on 6 Feb. that year. Like her late husband, she sought burial in St. Andrew’s church, ‘in the long aleye att the scoles ende where I was wonte somtyme for to sitte’. Among those whom she remembered in the will was her ‘sister’, Margaret Gavell. It is likely that she herself was born a Gavell, since she made bequests to the church at Kirkby Cane, a parish in south-east Norfolk where that family possessed a lordship. She also requested a priest to sing for ten years in St. Andrew’s, for her soul and for those of all for whom she was bound to pray, but without mentioning the MP by name. Agnes made Henry Cossey her sole executor.23 Reg. Gelour, ff. 9-10. Drolle and both his wives feature in the early sixteenth-century will of a former apprentice, Robert Gardener, who asked the houses of each of the four orders of friars in Norwich to pray for their souls. Probably related to the MP’s legatee, Thomas Gardener, Robert requested that a priest should go to Rome, to seek the privilege of 300 days’ remission of sins for all those who prayed in the Lady chapel of St. Andrew’s for various named individuals, including Drolle and his wives, so he must have remembered the MP with some affection.24 F. Blomefield, Norf. iv. 304; R.H. Frost, ‘Aldermen of Norwich, 1461-1509’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1996), 181.