JAMES, Andrew

Andrew, who was most likely a son of Peter James, although not the heir to his property, traded from Southampton from the early 1440s until 1470 or later. In 1442-3 he purchased 29 tuns of wine, worth nearly £68, from Breton merchants visiting the town, and later in 1443 he imported in his own name 13 tuns of iron, worth £32 10s. These commodities, along with woad, madder and raisins, he sent inland by cart, for the most part to Salisbury, Abingdon and Oxford, and on one occasion the vehicle hired was also loaded with a consignment of goods belonging to his putative father. He may have taken over some of Peter’s business in later years. His principal export was cloth, and he is recorded making shipments of 107 whole cloths in the period from September 1447 to the autumn of 1448.7 E101/128/31, m. 20; E122/140/62, f. 15v; 141/29, ff. 5, 36v, 39, 52, 57v; 141/38, m. 3d; 142/2, ff. 6, 30; 209/8, f. 16v; Brokage Bk. 1443-4, i (Soton. Rec. Ser. iv), 109; ii (ibid. vi), 159, 198, 204, 213-14, 229, 257, 294, 295; Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (ibid. xxxvi), 111, 112, 128, 133, 153, 161, 165-7, 200; Port Bks. 1469-71 (Soton Rec. Soc. 1937), 55.

Naturally enough, this mercantile activity sometimes led to disputes which came for resolution before the court of Chancery. For instance, James petitioned the chancellor regarding six pipes of Gascon wine he had purveyed to Robert Walford alias Sadeler* of Oxford in the winter of 1446-7. Walford had retailed the wine for much more than its cost at wholesale prices (£15), but nevertheless refused to pay him for it, evidently complaining about the poor quality of the produce, since James protested in response that the wine was ‘good and able and holesome for mannys body’.8 C1/16/615. In the Michaelmas term of 1455 he brought an action in the common pleas against Richard Thymer, a Bridport dyer, for a debt of almost £20 16s. which Thymer had been bound to pay him in two instalments in 1449 and 1450.9 CP40/779, rot. 100. He himself was in trouble in the Exchequer of pleas in February following for allegedly withholding the sum of £22 due for prisage on 40 tuns of sweet wine brought into Southampton on 22 Dec. 1451, this amount being payable to Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, then chief butler.10 E13/146, rot. 48. Later on, James sued Oliver Urry*, an Oxford skinner, for a debt of £5 and a Salisbury clerk for £6 13s. 4d., but although both suits led to the outlawry of the defendants both were able to obtain royal pardons and there is no evidence that he obtained satisfaction.11 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 3, 501.

Conversely, James, too, was beset by creditors. Early in Edward IV’s reign William Romayne petitioned the chancellor regarding the sum of £37 oustanding from a debt of £117. He said that James had recently been at Sherbourne, Romayne’s home town, where he knew full well that Romayne might have readily recovered his money, but persuaded him to forbear until he came to Southampton, where he would receive every penny and his costs, too. Yet when Romayne went to Southampton James had him arrested on an action of account in the town court, and looked likely to get him condemned in a substantial amount.12 C1/29/398. James himself was the victim of similar tactics. Another suit of the same period saw him as a plaintiff in Chancery against Andrew Brent in his capacity as executor of his late wife, herself the executrix of John Gervays of Salisbury. Brent had sued him in the common pleas under an action of detinue of £34 13s. 4d., by virtue of an obligation made by him to Gervays, in bar of which action he had shown the court a general acquittance made to him by Gervays long before his death. Even though the case was still pending, Brent started another action of detinue of £10 13s. 4d. in the piepowder court at Salisbury, and proposed to obtain a favourable judgement by ‘myght and embrasyng’.13 C1/29/378.

James had been involved in the affairs of the commonalty of Southampton since 1446, when he was elected bailiff, and in 1447-8 he again occupied the office when his kinsman, Peter James, was mayor. The two of them were subsequently accused along with the recorder, John Fleming, who was Andrew’s father-in-law, of wrongfully ousting another merchant, Thomas White, from the franchise.14 C1/16/352. As sheriff of Southampton James conducted the parliamentary election of 10 Feb. 1449, and at the next election, on 20 Oct. that year, he was one of 13 burgesses named alongside the mayor on the electoral indenture.15 C219/15/6, 7. Although clearly identified up until then as a member of the group opposed to Thomas White and the latter’s highly litigious father-in-law, John Payn, at some point in the 1450s he changed camps, going so far, indeed, as to take as his second wife another of Payn’s daughters. This probably happened as a consequence of a quarrel between him and Fleming, who, according to James’s petition to the chancellor, had promised at the time of his marriage to Fleming’s daughter, Joan, that they might keep for themselves and Joan’s issue the house in which Fleming had himself dwelled, but that although the couple produced ‘diverse children’ before Joan died, he had never completed the legal formalities. Furthermore, when Fleming did finally draw up a deed purporting to confirm the title of James and his children, he ‘sutteley’ made the grant to James alone, merely for his lifetime and subject to various conditions. Nothing was said at the time, and James, who was ‘nozt undyrstondyng yn letture’ and in any case had full confidence and trust in his former father-in-law, placed his seal on the indenture believing its terms to be in accordance with the promise. He asked the chancellor to summon Fleming to him for examination on pain of £100.16 C1/16/277. Whatever the outcome, James continued living in the capital tenement concerned (in the parish of Holy Rood, on the east side of English Street), which was next door to two other tenements of his own.17 Southampton Terrier 1454, nos. 65-66; Soton. recs. SC11/597.

Whether James’s quarrel with Fleming caused him to become allied with the latter’s rival, Payn, or whether his marriage to Payn’s daughter came first, is not clear, but for several years following he was closely identified with Payn’s faction. During James’s mayoralty of 1452-3 his wife’s kinsman, Thomas Payn, was sheriff, and so it was the latter who returned him to the Parliament summoned to Reading in March 1453. At the dissolution, over a year later, James was commissioned to levy £100 from the inhabitants of Southampton as a loan to fund naval defence and in particular the sea-keeping force established in the Parliament, the loan being repayable from the tunnage and poundage collected in the port. James appears to have been excluded from power in Southampton from 1455 (when he attested the electoral indenture of 23 June along with both Fleming and Payn),18 C219/16/3. to 1460, a period during which Payn and his relations lost control of the town government and fought a battle in the law courts with those in power. But then, together with his brother-in-law, John Payn junior, and others of their persuasion, James disrupted the mayoral elections of September 1460 by leading into the guildhall an armed mob some 100 strong. They forced the assembled burgesses to elect their candidate, Robert Bagworth.19 CPR, 1452-61, p. 639.

Quite likely while Bagworth was still mayor, James was returned to Parliament for a second time, in 1461, and was paid wages for 59 days service.20 Southampton recs. SC5/1/10. He appears to have been greatly influenced by his father-in-law Payn, who was re-elected mayor at Michaelmas 1462, and like him he began not only to manipulate the legal system for his own ends, but also, in the 1450s or 1460s, to prosecute foreign merchants, imitating Payn’s high-handed dealings and xenophobia. For instance, having secured judgement against one Francisco Romy of Spain in a court of piepowder in Southampton, and finding himself unable to recover the sum of money due, he brought an action of maintenance against Angelo Cattaneo, a Genoese merchant. The latter protested to the chancellor that although he had never supported Romy, James’s persecution prevented him from trading and his business was likely to be destroyed by James’s ‘sotell and ontrewe labor’. In another petition the Italian Benedetto Spinola complained to the chancellor that one Quelicus Brignaly, an alien, had been promised by the favour and friendship of the mayor if he would do his will as a member of a jury selected to try a case between James and another foreigner.21 C1/29/405; 32/76; Italian Merchants in Southampton (Soton. Rec. Ser. i), 176-9.

Following Payn’s removal from the mayoralty in May 1463 and his retirement to London, James also withdrew from a prominent role in the government of Southampton. He and William James, perhaps his brother, were listed as potential jurors at judicial inquiries into felonies and treasons in July 1466, but neither were pricked for service.22 KB9/314/65. However, in 1468 Andrew became involved once more in the affairs of the commonalty. Together with Robert Bagworth he rode to Farnham to see the diocesan, Bishop Waynflete of Winchester, on the town’s business, and he took an active interest in the port’s defences in the capacity of ‘lieutenant’, which probably means he was then acting as deputy to the mayor, John Walker†. Labourers were paid to ‘sette owte the gonnes’ near God’s House tower, among these weapons being one called ‘Thomas wt ye Berd’, which, ‘new bowned and pencylled’, was delivered by James to the queen’s brother Anthony, Lord Scales, on 30 May. The townspeople provided hospitality to Scales and his wife about this time, and on another occasion James joined the party of officials, including the mayor and Bagworth, which visited him on the Isle of Wight.23 Soton. recs. SC5/1/11, ff. 12, 15, 16v-19. When Scales, now Earl Rivers, was appointed chief butler for life in 1473, James was nominated one of his deputies in the port of Southampton.24 CPR, 1467-77, p. 393.

James again attested the Southampton parliamentary indentures in 1472 and 1478.25 C219/17/2, 3. In September 1483 proceedings were begun against him for the recovery of a debt of £50, which he had left owing to the widowed Isabel Aylward for 25 years, and, in an ignominious end to his career, he was imprisoned in the spring of 1486. Dying shortly afterwards, he was survived by his wife Margery, who held property near the fish market.26 C241/264/30; C131/82/4; Soton. recs. SC11/597; Cart. God’s House, ii (Soton. Rec. Ser. xx), 255.