GAMEL, John

The Gamels were one of the most ancient and important families in the borough of Shrewsbury, tracing a descent back to the first years of the thirteenth century. John’s grandfather, Thomas Gamel†, a mason, had been an influential local figure and MP for the borough in the Parliament of 1336, and another member of the family, John Gamel (d.1408), ended a successful ecclesiastical career as canon of Wells.4 Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 3, i. 18-19; v. 393-400; Lambeth Palace Lib. Reg. Arundel, f. 251d. Our John makes his first appearance in the records in 1401, when he was joined with his parents as defendant in an assize of novel disseisin over a messuage in Shrewsbury.5 JUST1/750, m. 1d. Five years later he was involved with his father in a more important dispute arising out of rival interpretations of Thomas Gamel’s will of 1355. Our MP’s paternal aunt, Eleanor, wife of John Perle, another of the town’s leading burgesses, claimed part of the family estate, and in 1406 the Gamels brought an assize of novel disseisin against them. The matter was put to arbitration, the standing of the arbiters (among whom were Sir Thomas Aston†, one of those commissioned to hear the assize, and John Knightley†, deputy justiciar of Chester and North Wales) attesting to the importance of the matter, and the award favoured our MP and his father.6 CP40/587, rot. 135.

Gamel was married by 1409. Although nothing is known of his wife’s family, it seems that the match was a good one: by a final concord of that year he and his wife Agnes conveyed their interest in a manor in Wigmore in north Herefordshire to John Betton and a chaplain, Richard Colfox, and the probability is that the interest was Agnes’s.7 CP25(1)/195/20/20. It was about the time of this marriage that Gamel began his long career in the administration of his home town, serving as one of the borough assessors in 1409-10 and in 1413-14, on the latter occasion while his father was bailiff. Soon after, on 3 Oct. 1415, he attested the county election, perhaps being qualified to do so by lands he held in right of his wife.8 C219/11/7. He was clearly a man of standing despite his father’s survival, and this is most clearly exemplified by his appointment by the Crown, in 1421, as keeper of the lesser piece of the seal of the statute-merchant in Shrewsbury. The keepership was usually the preserve of lawyers, and there is some indirect evidence that Gamel had a legal training. He is found doing things that lawyers did: in 1415 and 1425 he offered sureties in King’s bench, he sometimes prosecuted actions in person in the central courts, and in 1441 he acted as a pledge for the prosecution of an assize of novel disseisin in the borough court.9 KB27/617, fines rot.; 656, rot. 69; Salop Archs., Shrewsbury deeds 3365/2498.

Although Gamel’s father appears to have lived to see his son elected as one of the bailiffs in the autumn of 1424, our MP was effective head of the family before that date (his father’s last office was that of bailiff in 1413-14).10 On his election as bailiff in 1424, our MP is styled ‘junior’, implying that his father was still alive: Shrewsbury assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 15. The father was not certainly dead until 28 May 1426, when Katherine, as his widow, had a plea of debt pending in the local ct.: Shrewsbury recs., ct. rolls 3365/832d. It was therefore almost certainly our MP rather than his father who, among a group of leading townsmen, violently disrupted the annual fair of the abbey of Shrewsbury held at Coleham, just outside the town, in August 1423. The abbot petitioned the Lords in the Parliament which met in the following October against this infraction of his rights, and Gamel was among the townsmen summoned to answer before the royal council. The matter was, however, soon resolved by an arbitration made during Gamel’s term as bailiff.11 SC8/71/3550; D.R. Walker, ‘Shrewsbury in the 15th Cent.’ (Univ. of Wales, Swansea Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 155-6; Salop Archs., Stobbs colln. 215/36.

It was also during this first of his five terms as bailiff that Gamel was elected to represent Shrewsbury in the Parliament which met on 30 Apr. 1425. During the first session he stood surety in the court of King’s bench for his fellow burgess, William Horde*, who had been appealed for procuring a murder.12 C219/13/3; KB27/656, rot. 69. Given the length of his career and the journeys he made to Westminster to sue actions in the central courts, it is surprising that this is the only assembly to which he was returned.

In the immediate wake of inheriting his patrimony, Gamel was particularly active in these courts, suggesting that he had difficulty in making good his title to part of it or, more probably, that he was trying to recall grants made by his immediate ancestors. In 1427 and 1428, for example, he personally sued several writs of formedon in the court of common pleas for various messuages in Shrewsbury.13 CP40/666, rot. 437; 667, rot. 491; 671, rot. 307. What success this brought him does not appear, but if later estimates of the value of his landholdings are a proper guide he was a significant landholder, both within the borough and without. A Chancery petition of the early sixteenth century claimed he held the manor of Walton in the parish of Worthen (near the Welsh border), worth £25 p.a., with tenements in Shrewsbury, principally on Wyle Cop, worth a further £36 p.a.14 C1/735/3; 745/9-10. No doubt these figures are exaggerated valuations of this property in our MP’s time; none the less, there is no reason to doubt that he was one of the richest men in Shrewsbury.

Gamel attested consecutive county elections in 1427 and 1429, and on 11 Apr. 1431 he was one of the principal jurors at the inquisition taken at Shrewsbury on the death of (Sir) Richard Hankford*. Such appearances indicate that he was considered as one of the county gentry, and this explains his nomination as a tax collector in the county in 1432.15 C219/13/5; 14/1; CIPM, xxiii. 575; CFR, xvi. 106. But the borough was the centre of his activities, and he was elected as bailiff for a second term in 1438. His term of office coincided with a critical moment in the town’s dispute with the nearby abbey of Lilleshall over rights of common moor. On 5 Jan. 1439 a commission, headed by Humphrey, earl of Stafford, was issued by the Crown on the abbot’s complaint that Gamel and the other bailiff, Richard Burley, had instigated the forcible seizure and enclosure of the abbey’s moor at Hencott in the parish of St. Alkmund. Such external intervention was unwelcome to the borough authorities, and it was for this reason that they invested heavily in reaching an agreement with the abbey. In May 1442 the borough spent as much as £4 8s. 2½d. as the expenses of Gamel, Richard Horde* and three lawyers, William Burley I*, John Wynnesbury* and Thomas Mollesley, in three days of negotiations.16 CPR, 1436-41, p. 268; Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/377, m. 1.

By this time Gamel was faced with pressing problems of his own. Soon after the end of his second term as bailiff he had entered three bonds totaling as much as £400 to another of the original aldermen, John Shetton, a draper, a suggestion that he might have been in financial difficulties.17 Shrewsbury assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 56. More importantly, however, he made a humiliating admission. Shortly before 31 May 1442, ‘of his mere mocion and propre voluntee’, he confessed to the earl of Stafford at Stafford castle and at the earl’s London inn at St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, that he and the widow of Hynkin Mytton had forged a will for her dead husband by which certain unspecified lands were demised to the hurt of the earl’s servant, William Mytton*. Gamel had long been involved in the affairs of the Myttons. In 1423 William’s grandfather, Reynold, had sold him a croft containing eight acres of arable land and adjoining meadow next to the grange of ‘Derevald’ and six more acres near Shrewsbury castle. The sale appears to have been controversial: in 1432 Reynold’s widow, Alice, sued Gamel for both debt and for close-breaking at ‘Derevald’. Although this matter appears to have been resolved in the following year, when Alice released her right in the disputed property, the conspiracy was probably intended to secure some additional part of the Mytton lands for our MP.18 NLW, Peniarth mss, 280, p. 21; Salop Archs., deeds, 6000/3866, 3927; CP40/684, rot. 34d. Alice and our MP were Reynold Mytton’s executors: CP40/684, rot. 95.

This confession of dishonesty had no detrimental effect on Gamel’s career. In 1444-5 he travelled to London on Shrewsbury’s business, receiving a gift of wine worth 4d. on his return home, and when in the Parliament of 1445-6 the borough successfully petitioned for a new constitution, he was named as one of the 12 ‘worthi Burgeys receantz housholders, most sufficient and discrete’ who his fellow townsmen wanted to serve as aldermen.19 Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/377, m. 3; assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 68v. Despite his advanced age, there followed a period of intense activity in the town’s administration: in the autumn in 1446 he was elected to serve as one of the two coroners; on 16 Mar. 1448 he was chosen as bailiff after John Falk had died in office; and in September 1451 he was elected as bailiff for a further term.20 Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/377, m. 7; assembly bk. 67, f. 18v. This last term as bailiff came at a difficult time in the town’s affairs. In February 1452 Richard, duke of York, wrote to his ‘right worshipful friends, the bailiffs, burgesses and commons of the good town of Shrewsbury’, asking them for their active support against his enemy, Edmund, duke of Somerset. The town sent a deputation to Duke Richard at Ludlow, and Gamel journeyed to Wenlock, perhaps in connexion with the same matter. There is nothing to suggest that he heeded the call, but he did take the precaution of suing out a general pardon on 21 June 1452 after the failure of the duke’s rising.21 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 97-98; Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/380, m. 1; C67/40, m. 23.

This, however, marked a sudden end of Gamel’s administrative career, and it is probable that he died soon afterwards. He last appears in the records in September 1453 when he quitclaimed his lands to a new group of feoffees, headed by the Shropshire lawyer William Lacon I*.22 These feoffees succeeded another group, headed by Richard Stury*: Salop deeds, 6000/3602. He was dead by 23 July 1462, when this property was in the hands of his two daughters and coheiresses. They were married by this date, but not, curiously, to local men: the one, Elizabeth, was the wife of Robert Bryan of Barton-upon-Humber in Lincolnshire, and the other, Agnes, to the obscure John Waren.23 Shrewsbury drapers’ comp. X1831/2/11/8; Salop deeds, 6000/2020, 6285.