SHIRWODE, Robert

The office of common clerk, who enrolled all records and grants made at the city council and more general assemblies, was clearly the preserve of men with a legal training. When Shirwode first appears in the records he was already in office: as clerk he was present at the common congregation of more than 240 citizens which met to confirm the important order of 1392 regulating the use of the city seal. He was again present in the same capacity at similar assemblies in April 1422 and September 1423, and if, as seems very probable, the offices of ‘common clerk’ and ‘clerk of the sheriffs’ are synonomous, then he held the post into the 1440s.1 Lincs. AO, Lincoln city recs., White bk. L1/3/1, ff. 3, 3v, 5. He surrendered the office between 1439 and 1450: C1/45/246; CP40/756, rots. 136, 324. It was thus as common clerk that he was elected on 7 Apr. 1432 to represent the city in a Parliament of some significance to its fortunes. He and his fellow Member, John Rous*, were no doubt responsible for pressing 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.2 C219/14/3; Assoc. Archit. Socs. Reps. and Pprs. xxxix. 234.

Most of the references to Shirwode are characteristic of those one would expect to relate to a minor urban lawyer. Soon after the conclusion of his only Parliament he was named, along with another Lincoln lawyer, Robert Gegge*, among the feoffees of Thomas Waynflete, a relative of the future bishop of Winchester. Later, on 14 July 1436 the Crown granted him the keeping of a plot of land in the suburbs of Lincoln and a shop in the parish of St. Michael for the long term of 40 years at an annual rent of 2s. 4d.3 CCR, 1435-41, p. 448; CFR, xvi. 295. He attended the common congregation of September 1438, and in August 1447 he was one of the four Lincoln men, along with John Rous and Robert Walsh*, who returned an award in a dispute between the city community and the local priory of St. Katherine.4 Lincoln White bk. L1/3/1, ff. 8v, 77; Assoc. Archit. Soc. Reps. and Pprs. xxvii. 305-7. He was at least twice a defendant in Chancery, but neither case was very significant. In 1439 he was sued for his failure to give up an obligation in five marks for a debt that had allegedly been paid. Here he was acting, as he must frequently have done in his legal capacity, as a third party in a commercial transaction. Slightly more interesting is the other case. One William Sherman claimed that he had sued a Lincoln chapman on a plea of account in the court of common pleas and that the defendant, when process had moved almost as far as proclamation of outlawry, had surrendered himself to Edward Burton and John Tonard, the sheriffs of the city. They had, however, on the advice of Shirwode as their clerk, released the defendant to the hindering of the plaintiff’s suit.5 C1/9/474; 45/246. Burton and Tonard were sheriffs Sept. 1438-9: Assoc. Archit. Socs. Reps. and Pprs. xxxix. 235.

Shirwode’s long tenure of the clerkship led him into trouble of another sort in Hilary term 1450. Gegge and another local lawyer, Thomas Hayton, made it the subject of a vexatious action against him. The Parliament of 1445-6 had confirmed earlier legislation forbidding tenures of office of more than a year for sheriffs and related officers or their reappointment within three years after the end of any term. The new statute imposed a heavy penalty of £200 on any offender, half payable to the King and half to anyone who should sue the offender on the King’s behalf. Gegge and Hayton now sought to exploit this statute against the unfortunate Shirwode: Hayton alleged that he had served successive terms in 1445-6 and 1446-7 and Gegge claimed he had held the office in both 1446-7 and 1448-9. The probability is that the plaintiffs were simply motivated by greed, although it is possible that their suits were also informed by a constitutional dispute within the city. They may have been attempting to introduce a distinction that had not previously existed there, between the ‘common clerkship’, an office not subject to annual replacement, with that of ‘clerk of the sheriffs’, which fell under the terms of the statutes. The contentious nature of the suit may explain why, when Hayton’s action was due to be heard nisi prius before the justices of assize in the guildhall at Lincoln in February 1452, several of the jurors failed to attend. It is not known how the matter was resolved.6 CP40/756, rots. 136, 324; 757, rot. 119; 759, rot. 238.

Shirwode was still alive as late as February 1466 when he still had custody of the property granted to him 30 years before, but he was dead by 22 Feb. 1469. On that date a clerk named Thomas Kirkegate, presumably acting as one of his executors, came before the mayor and sheriffs of Lincoln to acknowledge a deed confirming the sale of a messuage in the parish of St. John in Wigford, formerly purchased by our MP and for the disposal of which he had provided in his lost will. The grant was a singular one in that, between a life estate settled on the purchaser and his wife and a remainder to their issue, was a remainder to Shirwode’s son Thomas in tail.7 CPR, 1461-7, p. 500; Lincoln White bk. L1/3/1, f. 30v.