RATHEBY, John

John was born into one of the leading families of Lincoln.1 He is not to be confused with his more important namesake and probable kinsman of Covenham, who was feodary of the duchy of Lancaster in Lincs. and receiver-gen. of the honour of Bolingbroke in the 1420s and 1430s, and later a Chancery clerk: Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. iv. 46-47; C67/45, m. 40. His maternal uncle, a wool merchant, twice represented the city in Parliament and served a term as mayor. His father, also a merchant, served as mayor in 1409-10 and attested five parliamentary elections between 1411 and 1417. In his father’s will, drawn up on 4 Dec. 1417 and proved on the following 24 June, John was bequeathed as much as 100 marks together with various plate and household goods of unspecified value.2 Assoc. Archit. Socs. Reps. and Pprs. xxxix. 232; C219/10/6; 11/1, 4, 7; 12/2; Reg. Repingdon (Lincoln Rec. Soc. lvii), 249-51. Then a minor, he was of age by 12 Nov. 1421 when he was one of the 240 citizens named as being present in the guildhall to confirm the important order of 1392 regulating the use of the city’s common seal. He was again at the congregations of the following 21 Apr., when ordinances were drawn up for the common good, and, as sheriff, for that of 14 Sept. 1423 when a new ordinance was made to govern mayoral elections. Later, on 21 Jan. 1428, he was in the guildhall to serve as a juror at the inquisition post mortem of Elizabeth, widow of Henry, Lord Beaumont.3 Lincs. AO, Lincoln city recs., White bk. L1/3/1, ff. 2d, 3d, 5; CIPM, xxiii. 99. His career culminated in his election as mayor in 1445 and as MP on 29 Sept. 1449. His mayoralty was an important one for the city. As mayor, he petitioned on behalf of the community for a royal licence to acquire lands in mortmain worth £120 p.a. and for a 40-year exemption from contributions to fifteenths and tenths. Such concessions in relief of the city’s poverty had been requested before, but Ratheby’s petition was the first to be more than partially successful.4 C219/15/7; Assoc. Archit. Socs. Reps. and Pprs. xxxix. 235; HMC 14th Rep. VIII, 35; CPR, 1446-52, p. 80. He attested the parliamentary elections in 1450 and 1453, but was dead by Michaelmas 1459, when his executors were pursuing his creditors in the court of common pleas.5 C219/16/1, 2; CP40/795, rot. 76d.

As with most of Lincoln’s MPs during the Lancastrian period, the paucity of surviving city records makes it difficult to put any flesh on the dry bones of an administrative career. Ratheby probably maintained his father’s trading interests – in 1432 a merchant from Grantham was pardoned for not answering him on a plea of debt, and in 1440 he himself was defendant in an action of trespass sued by a London tailor – but he also had landed interests, for he was styled ‘gentleman’ rather than ‘merchant’.6 CPR, 1429-36, p. 166; CP40/718, rot. 83. His father’s bequests to the Lindsey churches of Sotby, Hainton and Legsby imply that some of the family’s profits of trade had been invested in land some miles to the north-east of Lincoln, and in January 1432 John (described as ‘of Lincoln’ to distinguish him from his Covenham namesake) was returned as holding one eighth of a knight’s fee in Binbrook in the same area of the county. Indeed, it is probable that the family hailed from this area, in which lay Raithby, and that our MP was a cousin not only of his Covenham namesake but also of Hervey Ratheby of Sotby, who attested the county election in 1427.7 Reg. Repingdon, 249; Feudal Aids, iii. 357; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. iv. 46.

Little can be discovered concerning Ratheby’s property holdings in the city, but these must have been considerable, for through his mother he inherited the lands once of Robert Appleby. At his death, Appleby had owned property in the parishes of St. Peter at Arches, St. Peter in Wigford, St. Lawrence and elsewhere in the city, and in his will of 1407 he settled the reversion, after the deaths of his widow and others assigned life interests, on John’s parents and the issue of John’s mother.8 Reg. Repingdon, 110-11. Added to his patrimony in the parish of St. Peter at Arches and at other unspecified locations in the city, this property, when it fell in, must have made our MP one of the principal landholders in Lincoln. On 4 May 1461 his executors, Robert Gegge*, Master John Wilford and William Killingworth, conveyed a messuage in Northgate, for the sale of which their testator had provided in his will, to William West of Faldingworth.9 Lincoln White bk. L1/3/1, ff.23v-24.

Ratheby was involved in two unusual legal actions. According to an action brought in King’s bench, on 8 Sept. 1433 he joined three men of Boston in abducting a prisoner of war from the custody of John, son of John Bruyn*, at Bridgnorth in Shropshire. In Trinity and Michaelmas terms 1436 Ratheby troubled to appear personally to answer, but the plaintiff abandoned his suit and there is no evidence to give the alleged abduction a context.10 KB27/698, rot. 3d; 701, rot. 48. More revealingly, in the early 1450s Ratheby was the plaintiff in a Chancery case concerning the payment of parliamentary wages. He claimed that, as long before as 1426, he had agreed to pay four marks towards the expenses of Lincoln’s MPs on behalf of John Rous*, who had been assessed to contribute that sum by the ‘comyns’ of the city. Rous failed to make repayment during his lifetime, and, after Rous’s death in 1449, Ratheby sued his widow in the city court and then in a spiritual court in the city before Master John Tilney. As he was about to be awarded judgement in the latter, the defendant sued a prohibition, obliging him to turn to the chancellor for redress. Unfortunately, as with most Chancery cases, no verdict is recorded.11 Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 268-9. The disputed payment was made for the MPs’ expenses at a Parl. at Leicester, but this cannot refer to the Parl. of Nov. 1449, the final session of which was held in that city, for Rous died before it was summoned. The petition must, therefore, relate to the Parl. of 1426.