CLYVE, John

This MP was perhaps a descendant of a namesake who had represented Hastings in Parliament in 1377 and 1385, and a kinsman of Robert atte Clyve, a Portsman of Hastings who was exempted from taxation on his chattels at Fairlight in 1432.4 E179/226/69. He himself regularly claimed exemption from parliamentary subsidies in the years from 1439 to 1463, and in particular with regard to his moveable possessions at Fairlight and Ore.5 E179/189/96; 228/110, 112, 118; 229/154. More specific details about his landed holdings are generally wanting, although at one point he held two crofts on the manor of Stonelink in Fairlight.6 Bolney Bk. (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxiii), 57. Also, in 1455, he was assessed to a scot for the drainage of the Pevensey Levels.7 Suss. Arch. Collns. liii. 52 (from C260/149, no. 16).

Clyve, always active in the administration of Hastings, was sent as a delegate to Brodhulls on 13 occasions between 1440 and 1457.8 White and Black Bks. 12, 26-29, 31, 32, 38. From the spring of 1449 he served as bailiff of the town, and it was while in office that he was returned to his only recorded Parliament. After the end of his two-year term he was nominated at the Brodhull of July 1451 to officiate as one of the Ports’ bailiffs at the annual herring fair at Yarmouth, but he was prevented from going, seemingly as a consequence of a disagreement at home. At the Brodhull of 4 Apr. 1452 he complained that after his election to the office Alan Honywood*, his successor as bailiff of Hastings, had removed him without reasonable cause. Honywood submitted to the judgement of the assembly, which imposed a fine of £2 and ordered him to pay Clyve 20s. in recompense, although as he was prepared to pay these dues on the spot they were halved. Honywood was let off lightly: the assembly decreed that any person behaving in this arbitrary fashion in future should be fined £20 and permanently banned from attending Brodhulls.9 Ibid. 27, 29. Controversy over the appointment of Hastings’ representative at Yarmouth arose again five years later, with Clyve once more being at the centre of the dispute. In July 1457 he was again nominated to be bailiff at the fair, only to be ‘dismissed’ and the choice of bailiff from Hastings made from three other nominees, one of whom was his former opponent Honywood.10 Ibid. 38.

Clyve is not recorded alive after 1463.11 E179/189/96. It is possible that Joan a Clyff of Hastings, mentioned in a lawsuit brought to the attention of the Brodhull of April 1472, was his widow,12 White and Black Bks. 65. and it may be that the obit celebrated in the churches of Westham and All Saints, Hastings, said to have been funded by a donation of ‘Cliffe lands’ made by Jenetta a Clyve, commemorated his life.13 Suss. Arch. Collns. xiv. 99.