ROUS, John

Rous was the one of the wealthiest men to represent Lincoln during the Lancastrian period. Nothing is known of his origins, and he seems to have owed his initial advancement to marriage. The evidence for this is indirect but compelling. When he drew up his will he wished to be buried in the church of St. Swithin next to the tomb of John Norman. The Normans had been an important city family in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and under the terms of the testament of this John, their last male representative, their extensive property in the city was settled on his widow Joan in fee. By a fine levied in Trinity term 1425 a large estate in the city, comprising 20 messuages and 120 acres, was settled on Rous and Joan and the latter’s heirs. There can, in short, be little doubt that Norman’s widow was our MP’s wife, and it is significant here that Rous first appears in the records at about the time that Norman died. Norman’s will of 25 Feb. 1420 was proved on 7 Jan. 1421, and in November 1420 Rous, probably already established on the Norman lands, stood as a parliamentary mainpernor for the city’s recorder, John Bigge†.3 Lincs. AO, Reg. Fleming, f. 215; CP25(1)/145/156/16; C219/12/4.

Thereafter Rous quickly established a prominent part in the city’s affairs. In November 1421 he was present at the common congregation, and on 14 Sept. 1423, when a common congregation and a parliamentary election were held on the same day, he attended both.4 Lincs. AO, Lincoln city recs., White bk. L1/3/1, ff. 2v, 5; C219/13/2. After serving a term as mayor, on 7 Apr. 1432 he was elected to represent Lincoln in a Parliament of particular importance to the city’s interests. He and his fellow Member, Robert Shirwode*, were no doubt responsible for pressing, with partial success, the community’s petition for a licence to acquire lands in mortmain to the value of £120 and for a grant of two fairs in relief of its poverty.5 C219/14/3; Assoc. Arch. Socs. Reps. and Pprs. xxxix. 234. Later, at the common congregation of 14 Sept. 1438, after the city had received royal letters requiring the appointment of only the more substantial citizens to the mayoralty, Rous was elected to that office for the second time; and in August 1447, along with Shirwode and Robert Walsh*, he was one of the four citizens who returned an award in the dispute between the community and the local Gilbertine priory of St. Katherine over rights of common pasture and other matters.6 Lincoln White bk. L1/3/1, ff. 8d, 77; J.W.F. Hill, Med. Lincoln, 277-8; Assoc. Arch. Soc. Reps. and Pprs. xxvii. 305-7.

In addition to his administrative activities, Rous developed wide-ranging commercial interests that few of his Lincoln contemporaries could match. As early as the mid 1420s he had connexions with the wealthy London mercers, William Melreth* and John Olney, and the large number of actions he brought for debt in the court of common pleas imply that cloth was his principal trade. He frequently sued litsters, dyers, fullers and drapers from such places as Nottingham, Boston and Chesterfield, and in Michaelmas term 1435 alone he was suing at least 16 defendants for debts totalling in excess of £120.7 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 206-7, 216-17; CP40/699, rots. 46, 80, 376; 703, rot. 26d; 710, rot. 11; 718, rot. 370; 743, rot. 497d. His extensive litigation is also reflected in the frequency with which his creditors were outlawed at his suit: CPR, 1436-41, pp. 217, 458, 463; 1446-52, pp. 94, 102, 199, 483; 1452-61, p. 269. His involvement in this trade explains why, in the autumn of 1444, the Crown appointed him an alnager, an office he held jointly with Robert Pylton until near the end of his life when their letters patent were revoked in favour of two much more important men, John Hampton II* and William Essex*, as prior grantees.8 CFR, xvii. 306; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 218-19. A Chancery case of the early 1440s provides some particulars of his commercial transactions. Richard Hert, a fellow citizen of Lincoln, claimed that as surety for the delivery of 20 bales of woad which our MP had purchased from him for £44 he had enfeoffed him of a tenement in the city worth 40s. p.a. and handed over to him jewels and cloth worth £60. Although, however, Hert had delivered six of the bales before the day set for their delivery, Rous had refused to receive the rest or surrender the surety.9 C1/15/89. It is probably this surety that lies behind Hert’s grant, dated 20 Sept. 1439 and enrolled in Chancery on 7 Dec. 1440, of all his goods and chattels to Rous and another Lincoln citizen, John Hedon: CCR, 1435-41, p. 445. For other litigation relating to Rous’s dealing with Hert: CP40/740, rot. 439; 741, rot. 335d; 748, rot. 365; C244/40/44; C1/136/21.

The only evidence that survives concerning the location of Rous’s property within the city of Lincoln comes from the will of his wife’s former husband. Norman left Joan capital messuages in the parishes of St. Swithin and St. Nicholas in Newport and 26 acres of arable land in the fields of the city together with other property in the parishes of St. Laurence, St. Margaret on the Hill and St. Mary Magdelene in the Bail. In March 1456, when widowed for the second time, she, with William Rous, who was probably her son, and William’s wife, Katherine, quitclaimed to Thomas Salisbury, archdeacon of Bedford, and others their right in three messuages in this latter parish.10 Reg. Fleming, f. 215; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 124-5. Our MP supplemented his wife’s holdings by leasing property outside the city. On 10 Jan. 1433 he leased, for a term of ten years at an annual rent of £5, land and a fishery in the parishes of Skellingthorpe and Boultham, together with 24 cows and a bull, from the heavily-indebted abbey of Bardney.11 CP40/743, rot. 496; 746, rot. 337. For the abbey’s parlous financial state: Vis. Religious Houses Diocese of Lincoln (Canterbury and York Soc. xxiv), 14ff.

Rous made his will on 9 Feb. 1449. As a considerable proportion of his landed wealth appears to have come to him through his wife, it was fitting that she should be the only substantial beneficiary under its terms: she was to have £300 in money together with all the merchandise, jewels and household utensils in his principal residence. The other three bequests were all charitable: 10s. to the church of his burial, 6s. 8d. to Lincoln cathedral, and the far from insignificant sum of £9 3s. 4d. to be distributed among the city poor. His widow, as his principal executor, was to be assisted by a chaplain and two Lincoln citizens, William Horn and William Vernis, then one of the sheriffs. The will was proved on 17 Aug.12 Lincs. AO, Reg. Alnwick, ff. 23v-24.

Rous’s unresolved affairs led his widow into litigation. Much of this involved routine actions for debt, both owed and owing.13 e.g. CP40/795, rot. 189; 806, rot. 48. A petition presented against her by John Ratheby* in the early 1450s is, however, of more interest. Ratheby claimed that, as long before as 1426, her husband had agreed to pay four marks towards the expenses of the city’s MPs and had asked him to advance it on his behalf on the promise of hasty repayment. Rous, however, had failed to honour the agreement during his lifetime, and his widow, as his executrix, had refused to make good her husband’s omission.14 Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 19, 268.