STEBBING, Nicholas

Stebbing lived in the port he represented in the Commons. The full extent of his property-holdings and the dates of their acquisition are obscure, but they were clearly substantial. Towards the end of his life he inhabited a house with two small adjoining gardens which he had acquired from William Notefield*, and owned another in the High Street which John Hawley* had granted to him before setting out on pilgrimage to Santiago. To these he had added a number of messuages in both Dartmouth and Southtown, a brewery with a cellar and solar, tenements and a vacant plot in ‘Pynneslane’ and at ‘Pynneslane ende’, a small building with a garden attached ‘Aboveton’, two more close together in Hardness (which he held from Cornworthy priory for an annual rent of 2 lb. of wax), and another nearby called ‘Seint Johannes hows’. In addition, he held lands further away, in Mareknolle and Totnes.8 Watkin, 116, 144-5; Harvard Univ. Law School Lib., English deeds, 360.

Although Stebbing had an interest in the brewing industry he was primarily a merchant, engaged by 1428 in the cross-Channel trade. In that year, in partnership with Hugh Yon* and others, he had purchased a barge called La Kateryne, which had previously come into the possession of two other Dartmouth men, John Stanbery and John Cleve. The barge was said to have been taken from Breton enemies while sailing to Bordeaux and brought to Dartmouth by its English captors. There it had been acquired by Stebbing and his associates for 45 marks. Although Stanbery and Cleve brought a suit in the court of admiralty to recover the vessel, a panel of arbitrators resolved that they should pay Stebbing and the rest their 45 marks as well as an additional £6 10s.9 Watkin, 392. In the event, the matter seems to have been settled amicably, for both Stebbing and Yon were recorded as Cleve’s feoffees at the time of the latter’s death. This proved an onerous task, for they were instructed to keep the testator’s obit and anniversary after the death of his widow and sole executrix.10 Ibid. 133-4. Among his early enterprises, Stebbing supplied different types of cloth, worth £15 2s., to the royal wardrobe for the King’s use,11 E101/409/12, f. 10v. and in later years he traded on a large scale (as is indicated by the substantial sum of £200 which William Bysshop, a merchant from Alfington, Devon, paid to him in 1454 for merchandise sold at the staple of Exeter).12 Watkin, 400.

Stebbing’s mercantile interests were probably an important factor in his decision to set up alternative residences as far away as Southwark and in Hertfordshire.13 C67/38, m. 21. Yet the focus of his concerns always continued to lie at Dartmouth. It was there that on his election as bailiff in 1428 he began a long career in local administration, and Crown office in the region soon followed. In November 1430 Sir John Radcliffe*, who had been assigned the customs revenues of six west-country ports along with the privilege of appointing one of the collectors in each of them, nominated him as collector for Exeter and its district, an office which a year later was extended to include his home port of Dartmouth.14 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 158; CFR, xvi. 12. The trade that came to Dartmouth through its port was central to the town’s wealth, and as the King’s customs collectors could be expected to have first-hand knowledge of all its aspects, Stebbing was an obvious choice to represent the borough’s interests in the Parliament of 1432. The election came at a convenient moment, for under a writ of sub poena instigated by a group of Genoese merchants (in a now obscure dispute), he was required to attend the Chancery at Westminster on 5 May, just a week before the Commons were due to assemble. He duly appeared both on that day and again on 18 May, when he was dismissed sine die, with the agreement of John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, who was acting for the Italians.15 C244/5/116.

After his return home from Westminster, Stebbing resumed his duties as customer, an office he held for nearly 19 years in all, albeit not without interruption. In other respects, however, he met with difficulties. In the late 1420s Robert Hill* accused him and Hugh Yon of forging property deeds designed to undermine Hill’s title to his manor of Shilston, and of forcibly breaking into the property and threatening his tenants. Stebbing turned out to be less culpable than Yon, for in early 1433 he was acquitted at the Exeter assizes, while Yon was convicted and condemned to pay substantial damages.16 CP40/682, rots. 119d, 306d; 689, rot. 121. More seriously, later in the same year Stebbing became involved in a violent assault by a number of leading Dartmouth men on the royal escheator, Baldwin Fulford*.17 Watkin, 112-13. Whatever the government’s view of the incident, it did nothing to diminish the respect Stebbing enjoyed among his neighbours, and in the autumn of the following year he was chosen as mayor of the town, an office which he continued to hold for three successive years.18 Ibid. 185 gives John Wyttok or Wyght as mayor in 1434-5, but CPR, 1429-36, p. 608 shows Stebbing holding office by 8 June 1435. During this lengthy mayoralty, the Crown appointed him to a number of ad hoc commissions, while another duty that fell within the mayor’s remit was the conduct of the borough’s parliamentary elections and their certification to the sheriff. Stebbing personally took the result of the election of 1435 to the county court held at Exeter castle on 30 Aug. and attested the composite indenture for the shire and all its boroughs.19 C219/14/5.

Before long Stebbing faced fresh troubles, arising from a dispute with Elizabeth Carew, Nicholas Carew and his old associate Yon over a tenement which had formerly been in the possession of John Sampson and his wife Eleanor, and in May 1438 the mayor and bailiffs of Dartmouth were instructed to proceed to Stebbing’s house and to arrest any men who were found to have taken possession of it. Two months later, the parties agreed to put their quarrel to arbitration. Yon and the Carews appointed the prominent lawyers William Hyndeston* and John More as their arbiters, whereas Stebbing relied on Henry Drewe and John Brushford*.20 Watkin, 116, 396; CP40/717, rot. 302d; CP25(1)/46/86/181. By this date Stebbing and Brushford had been acquainted for some time, and may already have forged the alliance, perhaps friendship, which connected them in subsequent decades. They had been associated in 1436 when Brushford served as bailiff of Dartmouth during Stebbing’s second term as mayor, and thereafter they regularly attested each other’s deeds and assisted one another in various ways.21 Watkin, 115-16, 125, 132, 138, 396. The two men came to dominate Dartmouth’s political life: between 1434 and 1453 Stebbing served five full terms as mayor, and Brushford no fewer than ten.

It is uncertain to what extent Stebbing owed his return to the Commons in 1442, after an absence of almost ten years, to Brushford, who as mayor presided over the elections. The years between 1439 and 1442 had seen repeated military expeditions to France set out from south-western England, and on several occasions he had been charged with the organization of shipping and the victualling and payment of the masters and mariners of the ships hired and impressed for this purpose.22 E403/734, m. 1; 736, m. 16; 745, m. 17; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 372, 451, 538. He was therefore well qualified to represent in Parliament the interests of several men of the port, whose ships were often among those commandeered. Stebbing’s appointment as customs collector at Exeter and Dartmouth had lapsed in 1440 but was renewed in October 1443.23 Watkin, 397-9; E403/755, m. 5. Stebbing then became actively engaged in arranging shipping for the expeditions of the dukes of York and Somerset to France, as well as supervising payments to the mariners conscripted for these voyages in ports further along the Channel such as Poole and Southampton.24 E403/749, m. 16.

Stebbing’s renewed mayoralty provided him with a welcome opportunity to repay Brushford for the service he had rendered him in securing his election the previous year, albeit at the cost of some personal vexation in the law courts. In 1441 the owner and master of a barge called La Marie of St. Mâlo had complained to the Crown that La Marie had been unlawfully taken at sea by two balingers from Falmouth, and her cargo of 43 tuns of white wine sold to various individuals. A commission of inquiry had ascertained the names of the buyers, and restitution had been ordered. Fourteen tuns of the wine had been purchased by Michael Mulner, a Dartmouth merchant who died shortly afterwards, and Brushford, then mayor of the town, had received silver plate to the value of £10 from his widow and executrix. Yet, this done, Brushford had failed to make a return to the writ or to make restitution to the ship’s master, Peter Stephan, who therefore sued out a writ against the mayor in June 1444. In the interim, Stebbing had replaced Brushford as mayor and it thus fell to him to execute the writ against his friend. This he was clearly reluctant to do, and he made a formal return to the effect that he had been unable to find Brushford within his bailiwick. Stephan now turned on Stebbing, charged him with making a false return, sued him for the costs of the suit against Brushford, and even had him arrested by a royal sergeant-at-arms. He not only claimed the expense of having four writs issued twice over, but also the wages of two mounted men dispatched to Dartmouth with the documents, the cost of legal counsel and, to add insult to injury, even a payment to the sergeant-at-arms.25 Watkin, 119; C1/13/46; 17/332; 45/54; C244/43/36. It seems that the charges against Stebbing came to nothing, for by mid 1446 he had secured a general pardon.26 C1/13/47; C67/39, m. 41; A.P.M. Wright, ‘Relations between the King’s Govt. and Bors.’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1965), 117-18.

In spite of a violent clash in April 1444 with the lawyer John More of Collumpton, who claimed that Stebbing, Brushford and several other prominent members of Dartmouth’s merchant community had assaulted him at Kingswear and Dartmouth, killed his horses and robbed him of a purse, Stebbing continued as customer until June 1447 and throughout the decade was periodically appointed to royal commissions.27 KB27/743, rot. 46d. The respect he commanded in Dartmouth and the influence of his associate Brushford ensured his return to the first Parliament of 1449. As in 1442, his presence in the Commons apparently drew him to the government’s attention and he was again appointed to collect customs and subsidies in the south-west in 1450.28 E102/2, rot. 16. When serving once more as mayor of Dartmouth in early 1453 he ensured his own return to the Parliament of that year.

It is tempting to connect Stebbing’s final dismissal as customer in March 1455 with the appointment as treasurer of James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, but there is no definite evidence to confirm such a hypothesis. It is equally possible that he had committed some unconnected misdemeanour, for in January 1456 he sued out a fresh pardon.29 C67/41, m. 11. This was during the third session of the Parliament to which he had been returned in the aftermath of the battle of St. Albans. He is not known to have been drawn into the turmoil that swept across Devon in the autumn of 1455, as the earl of Devon sought to settle his old scores with William, Lord Bonville*. Stebbing was to return to Crown office in May 1458, when the chief butler, the earl of Shrewsbury, appointed him as his deputy in the port of Exeter, and also about this time he served as water-bailiff of Dartmouth. In this capacity he clashed with Thomas Gille I*, who had once served as customer alongside him. While Stebbing was carrying out his official duties in an attempt to arrest Gille, the latter claimed that the water-bailiff ‘with a band of malefactors’ had attempted to murder him.30 CP40/796, rot. 251d.

Despite his heavy administrative workload, Stebbing occasionally attested deeds or acted as a feoffee for his neighbours,31 Watkin, 114, 116, 121, 123-9, 132, 134, 137. and his pre-eminence in local affairs was such that in 1460 he was chosen as the first alderman of Dartmouth. If the intention of the leading men of the town in making this appointment had been to secure the counsel of someone close to the government, this turned out to be a miscalculation, for with the accession of Edward IV Stebbing’s connexions at the centre came to an end. In July 1461 the new chief butler, John Wenlock*, now Lord Wenlock, removed him from his last remaining crown office, replacing him with the trusted Yorkist partisan Thomas Gille II*.

During his retirement Stebbing acted more frequently as a witness to the deeds and wills of his neighbours and as a feoffee of their lands,32 Ibid. 138, 139, 140, 142. and in 1464 he took a leading part in the conversion of the chantry originally endowed by Robert Bowyer (with his help) into a foundation providing for the souls of all the town’s elite (thus, in effect, turning it into a parish guild).33 Ibid. 140-1. That same year, on 10 May, he made a will settling on his wife Joan their house and its furnishings, his brewery with its cellar and solar, and the rents from two tenements at ‘Pynnyslane ende’, as well as the jewelry he had deposited with various creditors. His son Nicholas junior was to have ‘Seint Johannes hows’ at Hardness, as well as his holdings at Totnes, and his grandson William houses and a plot of land in Pynneslane. The testator’s lands and tenements at Mareknolle and a building formerly inhabited by his kinsman, another William Stebbing, were to be sold for payment of his debts.34 Ibid. 144-5. Stebbing nevertheless survived until 1469, when he conveyed all his lands to nine feoffees including Thomas Gale* and his kinsman William Stebbing. He was survived by his widow, who some years later disposed of her palisaded place and garden in Dartmouth, presumably the couple’s old home.35 Ibid. 150; HMC Dartmouth, i. 603; CP40/845, rot. 27. Stebbing’s obit, costing around 3s. a year, continued to be kept at St. Saviour’s church until the Reformation.36 Watkin, 318-19.