HUBERD, John

For lack of evidence, it is impossible to say whether this MP was a native of Cricklade, although John Huberd, ‘chapman’ lived there in the later 1440s.1 There is no proof that the MP was the John Huberd who stood surety for William Palmer* in the autumn of 1421, upon the election of Palmer to the last Parliament of Henry V’s reign as one of the Members for Malmesbury. Likewise, there is no evidence to link the MP with the John Huberd who, with his wife Alice, purchased lands in the Wiltshire parishes of Hankerton, Cloatley, Murcott and Crudwell for £20 from Thomas Hasard* and his wife in 1440. The purchaser was probably the husbandman of that name living in Hankerton in the early 1430s. There was also a John Huberd resident at Hankerton (whether the same man or a namesake) two decades later. It should be noted, however, that Hankerton was only a few miles away from Cricklade. C219/12/6; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 533; CP40/688, rots. 420, 420d; KB9/133, m. 12d; VCH Wilts. xiv. 98. In 1448, the London mercers, William Denton and Robert Strother, sued him in the court of common pleas at Westminster, alleging that he and a co-defendant from Cricklade, John Looke, owed them £6, a debt contracted in London. Looke was another mercer, and it is likely that the dispute arose from business dealings between the parties and that the chapman had interests in Wiltshire’s cloth trade.2 CP40/748, rots. 154, 460d. Three years later, John ‘Lok’ and John Huberd, probably the former co-defendants, were both party to a transaction by which Lok and his wife conveyed a messuage and half an acre in Cricklade to Huberd and others. It would appear that in this instance Huberd was acting as a feoffee on the couple’s behalf.3 Wilts. Feet of Fines, 597. In the same period, a John Huberd of Wiltshire contributed to the subsidy of 1450. He was of little consequence as a landowner since his lands were valued at just £2 p.a.4 E179/196/118. In summary, the only definite reference to the MP is the Cricklade return to the Parliament of 1437, although he may have been the John Huberd who attested the borough’s election to the Parliament of 1453.5 It is impossible to ascertain whether the MP was the John ‘Hubard’ to whom the Crown committed the farm of the manor of Hampstead Marshall, Berks. for 20 years in 1456: CFR, xix. 150.