COMBER, Stephen

Usually described as a yeoman, Comber may have made a living chiefly from the profits of landholding, although the value of his property is not known. He is first recorded in Hilary term 1446, as ‘formerly of Horsham’, when sued in the court of common pleas by George Stydolf for a debt of £20.1 CP40/740, rot. 49d. Stydolf was still pursuing him six years later, but then the amount claimed was £10 and Stydolf had been joined as co-plaintiff by the Sussex lawyer Edmund Mille*. By that date Comber was said to be living in Nuthurst, some three miles from Horsham.2 CP40/766, rot. 42d. Meanwhile, in the year of his first election to Parliament for the borough, he had been asked to be a feoffee of land nearby in Warnham on behalf of the Bottyng family, and in the summer of 1452 he acted likewise for William Thwaites*, the attorney.3 Add. Chs. 8887-8; CP25(1)/241/90/23. Evidently a person of some consequence in the locality, Comber was among those, headed by William, earl of Arundel, who in November 1457 obtained a royal licence to found a guild in Horsham’s parish church of St. Mary, and to endow a chantry where a priest might pray for the welfare of its members and the royal family.4 CPR, 1452-61, p. 414. Another measure of his standing in Sussex is his attendance at the shire elections held at Chichester on 30 Apr. 1467, at the time of his own second return to the Commons for his home town. Furthermore, at the borough elections held at Horsham on 22 Sept. 1472 he headed the list of 15 named burgesses who were party to the electoral indenture.5 C219/17/1, 2.

It would seem that by the time of his second Parliament Comber had become personally known to Horsham’s lord, the last Mowbray duke of Norfolk, for he was among a group of Mowbray retainers who in the late 1460s endeavoured to help the prior of Sele priory (of which the duke was the patron) out of his severe financial difficulties. The prior owed two citizens of London, Reynold and John Assh, the sum of £264 5s. 4d., which Comber, heading the signatories of a deed guaranteeing payment to settle the debt, was bound over to pay to the Asshes in May 1466. On his failure to pay on the appointed day the two creditors sued him in the common pleas in September 1467, their suit coming to pleadings in the following Hilary term and ending in Michaelmas term when Comber paid damages and costs. But a large part of the debt remained outstanding. In February 1469 he was party to an arrangement whereby he and others agreed to procure from Duke John a lease for ten-and-a-half years of the Sussex manor of Washington on behalf of the Asshes, who would in turn sub-let the manor to Comber and his associates for a rent of £20 p.a., in this way recovering the remainder of the sum still due. Yet as late as July 1472 they had still not received full satisfaction, and the sheriff of Sussex was sent writs to arrest Comber. The sheriff’s failure to respond that September resulted in a suit in the Exchequer against him.6 CP40/826, rots. 432, 443d; 827, rot. 443d; E13/158, rots. 77, 77d, 82d; Cat. Suss. Deeds, Magdalen Coll. ed. Macray, ii. 183. At some point in the early 1470s, if not before, the duke granted Comber the farm of his manor of Knepp, worth 40s. p.a., presumably as a reward for his services, but in what capacity is not revealed.7 L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 441 (citing Lambeth Palace Lib. A.D. Ms. VI/330, f. 16).

During the later stages of his career Comber continued to live at Nuthurst, and to be called upon to act as a feoffee of land in the vicinity. One such commitment brought him into contact with the son and heir of (Sir) Roger Lewknor* in the early 1480s. He is last recorded in October 1486.8 Suss. Arch. Collns. xl. 119-20; Add. Chs. 18772, 18774; Bodl. Chs. Suss. 304-5.