FAIRGOO, Richard

That Fairgoo was one of the leading townsmen of Lewes is suggested both by his service as a juror at inquisitions post mortem conducted there in 1447 (on Joan, Lady Bardolf) and 1462 (on Bertram Harbottle),2 C139/128/30; C140/7/11. and by his appearance in the meantime, on 1 Mar. 1453, as the first of the three constables of Lewes named as party to the indenture made with the sheriff of Surrey and Sussex to attest the borough’s election to the Parliament summoned to assemble at Reading. He himself was returned to the Coventry Parliament of November 1459. For some time previously he had been a plaintiff in suits brought in the courts of King’s bench and common pleas against Thomas Bellingham* of Arundel and his wife Joan concerning the latter’s title to the Sussex manor of ‘Charlokkeston’. In this matter, which was still awaiting judgement five years later, he would seem to have been acting as a feoffee for members of the Mestede family, whose heir Joan claimed to be.3 KB27/789, rot. 41; 790, rots. 15, 111; 805, rot. 29d; Add. 39376, ff. 99, 116; CP40/802, rot. 287; 809, rot. 134. Fairgoo was more directly concerned in another suit, of Michaelmas term 1461, in which, described as a ‘saddler of Lewes’ he was accused by a clerk named Robert Thorp of illegally detaining goods worth £10.4 CP40/802, rot. 267d.

William Fairgoo, who attested the parliamentary indenture for Sussex in December 1477, may have been a son of the MP,5 C219/17/3. although by March 1486 the latter’s lands and tenements in Lewes were in the possession of William Penhurst of Burwash, who then sold them for £46 13s. 4d.6 Add. Ch. 30571.