BROWNING, Ralph

Active at Great Yarmouth by 1407, Browning took part in a conveyance of lands in Kirkby Cane, Stockton, Geldeston and other parishes in south-east Norfolk in January the following year.1 CP25(1)/168/183/81. From the end of Henry IV’s reign until his death, he features regularly in the borough’s court rolls, as a witness to other land transactions, as a party to various suits heard in the court and as a surety and executor for other burgesses.2 Norf. RO, Gt. Yarmouth recs., ct. rolls 1413-43, Y/C 4/124-50. He never became bailiff of Great Yarmouth, but he must have held some kind of an official position there in Henry V’s reign, since the court roll for 1419-20 records that he received 20s. towards his stipend for that year.3 Ct. roll 1419-20, Y/C 4/129, m. 9.

The Parliament of 1423 sat at Westminster but it is unlikely that Browning was a newcomer to London, since during the early 1420s he was associated with two stockfishmongers from the City as a feoffee of property in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey. Great Yarmouth was still a significant market, if one declining in importance, for London fishmongers in this period. Browning owned a quay there, so he must have had trading concerns or a stake in the local fishing industry. The exact extent of his holdings at Yarmouth is unknown, although in 1430 he augmented his property there by buying various lands and buildings from John Fastolf*. Four years later, he was among those in Norfolk expected to swear a nationally administered oath to keep the peace, so it is likely that he was a man of reasonable substance.4 CCR, 1422-9, p. 129; A. Saul, ‘English Towns in late Middle Ages’, Jnl. Med. Hist. viii. 83; ct. rolls 1424-5, 1429-30, Y/C 4/134, m. 9d; 138, m. 10d; CPR, 1429-36, p. 407.

At the end of the 1430s Browning, along with Judge William Paston, Robert Clere, esquire, and John Cobald sued Agnes Cupper, the widow of a former burgess, Robert Cupper*, for trespass in the borough court. Paston was the overseer of Cupper’s will and Browning and Cobald two of his executors, so it is likely that the suit was connected with certain properties in Great Yarmouth which the testator had settled upon them and the other plaintiffs during his lifetime, and which they were to convey to Miles Stapleton* in December 1442.5 Ct. rolls 1438-9, 1442-3, Y/C 4/147, m. 5; 150, m. 11; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 716-17; Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Doke, f. 65. The MP was embroiled in further litigation during the early 1440s when he, acting in his capacity as the executor of Robert Howesson, and Robert Oxney of Great Yarmouth took legal action against each other in the borough court. One of these cases, a suit for debt initiated by Browning, ended up in the King’s courts after he had objected to the way that Yarmouth’s bailiffs of 1440-1, Thomas atte Fenne* and Simon Folsham, had handled the case. After the bailiffs had barred the suit on a point of law, Browning tried but failed to have their ruling overturned in the court of King’s bench. He then turned to the Chancery, where he filed a bill claiming that the two men had fraudulently altered the records of the original suit that they had sent to King’s bench.6 Ct. roll 1439-40, Y/C 4/148, m. 5; C1/11/433. Browning was still alive in August 1443, when he was again a plaintiff in the borough court, but is likely to have died by the spring of 1447. In April that year, John Browning and Katherine his wife leased out a messuage called Le Belle, one of the properties that the MP had bought from Fastolf in 1430. John, who was probably Ralph’s son and heir, had come of age by the mid 1430s and had served as one of the chamberlains of Great Yarmouth in 1437-8.7 Ct. rolls 1433-4, 1437-8, 1442-3, Y/C 4/142, m. 6; 146, m. 1; 150, m. 6.