CLERK, Roger

Like many of the MPs of the borough of Stafford, Clerk was a servant of Humphrey, earl of Stafford and duke of Buckingham. He may have been active as early as 1419 when a Roger Clerk of Cotes, near Stafford, witnessed an exchange of lands between a burgess of Stafford, John Ashby, and the priory of St. Thomas the Martyr in the town.4 St. Thomas’s priory mss, D938/376-7. Since, however, the MP or a namesake was still active nearly 50 years later, it may be that this was another man, perhaps even the MP’s father. In any event, the later intermittent references to Roger Clerk are suggestive of a single career beginning with election to Parliament in 1435. In a combined return for Staffordshire and its two boroughs, he was elected as ‘Roger Clerk alias called Roger Taillour’. It is likely that he was qualified for election by residence: in 1444 he was described as ‘of Stafford, gentleman’ when he sat on a jury drawn from the town.5 C219/14/5; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xii. 263; CIPM, xxvi. 239.

Although there is nothing to indicate that Clerk attended an inn of court, it is clear that he had a legal training. In the 1440s, if not before, he acted as clerk of the peace in his native county. To this he added a minor place in the administration of the earl of Stafford. On 20 Oct. 1439 he was appointed clerk of the earl’s courts in Staffordshire, and, from the middle of the following decade he became one of the workhorses of the duke’s local administration. On 25 July 1445 he joined a prominent Stafford retainer, Humphrey Cotes, in drawing up a new rental for the duke’s property at Bridgnorth; and by the summer 1451 he was acting as steward of the duke’s manor of Drayton Basset (some miles to the south of Stafford), recently acquired in controversial circumstances from Sir Ralph Shirley†.6 Rawcliffe, 216; Egerton Roll 2190; St. Thomas’s priory mss, D938/161. Clerk was also deputy steward of the ducal manor of Forebridge, neighbouring Stafford, although his tenure of the office is known only from a later accusation that he had abused his position. At a court held there on 2 Oct. 1475 a jury ruled that the priory of St. Thomas the Martyr did not owe suit by virtue of its property at nearby Apeton and that suit had only been demanded in the past because of the enmity that Clerk, as the former deputy steward, had borne to the prior. It is not clear to what period this refers but since the priory had only acquired the Apeton property lands on the death of Sir Robert Moton* in about 1457, it may be the late 1450s.7 St. Thomas’s priory mss, D938/139. If Clerk held the office after that date, he did not do so under Duke Humphrey, who was killed at the battle of Northampton in July 1460.

The duke’s death did not mark the end of Clerk’s career, for on 16 Apr. 1467 he headed the attestors to the Staffordshire parliamentary election as one of the county’s four coroners. It may be that he had already held that office for some years – it would explain his attestation of two earlier county elections – but he probably did not hold it for much longer. In any event no further references to him have been traced.8 C219/17/1.