SUTTON, John

A Portsman of Rye by 1430, in the years that followed Sutton could claim exemption from taxation on his moveable goods outside the liberty, at Hope and Wivelridge in Sussex.4 E179/225/50; 228/118, 131; 229/138, 154. In 1441 he was party to a final concord whereby he acquired a messuage in nearby Playden, along with some 23 acres of farmland,5 CP25(1)/241/88/27. and eight years later he was derogatively called a ‘husbandman’ in a suit brought by the Sussex esquire Thomas Etchingham, who alleged that he had broken into his warren at Udimore and poached hares, pheasants and other game.6 CP40/753, rot. 46. His social standing subsequently improved remarkably, so that by 1460 the records of Rye could refer to his armigerous status.7 e.g. Rye mss, 60/2, f. 81. Besides deriving an income from the land, Sutton traded in fish, and it was as a ‘fishmonger’ that he joined Robert Onewyn I* and a husbandman called Richard Schodwell in the acquisition of a five-year lease from Adam Levelord* of the nearby manor of Leasam, for which they agreed to pay a rent of as much as £20 p.a. from August 1447.8 Cat. Rye Recs. ed. Dell, deed 137/13. In Rye itself Sutton paid rents to John Ypres, esquire, and then to Thomas Stoughton*, the successive owners of the important fortification known as ‘Ypres Tower’. He not only witnessed the sale of the tower by Ypres in 1452, but was also named as an attorney to transfer seisin. In 1454 it was said that he had failed to carry out repairs to a building in Rye for which Stoughton had made him an allowance of 12s. 4d.9 Ibid. 124/2-5. As mayor of Rye, in 1459 Sutton headed the list of householders in the Port taxed for a half-scot; like 18 others he was taxed at the highest amount of 3s. 4d.10 Rye mss, 60/2, f. 64. He evidently traded in other commodities besides fish, for he supplied food and drink for the visits of the lieutenant-warden of the Cinque Ports and his entourage to Rye in the autumn of 1455 and at Easter 1457, and he may have been a shipowner, for in 1456 he sold to the local authorities some wooden panels salvaged from the Cok John and ‘the Portyngale ship’ for use in the works on the quay on the Strand. The next year he supplied the town with 100 ‘Gonn stones’.11 Ibid. ff. 49v, 53v, 54v.

Sutton was frequently asked to witness deeds in Rye,12 Cat. Rye Recs. 122/9-11; 130/1; 135/1; 136/188-90; 137/11, 12, 14, 17. and this indication of his prominent position in the town is confirmed by his participation in its affairs for a period of more than 30 years, which started in July 1434 when the mayor of Rye presented him to the Brodhull as a suitable candidate as one of the Ports’ bailiffs at the autumn herring fair at Yarmouth. In due course in December that year he attended the Brodhull to deliver a report about how he and his fellows had been treated on their arrival in East Anglia.13 White and Black Bks. 4, 5. Elected mayor for the first of five terms in 1441, while in office he was returned to the Parliament summoned to assemble on 25 Jan. 1442. After the dissolution Rye sent him to the Brodhull of July that year, no doubt so that he could recount to the assembled delegates the events of the Parliament. He subsequently represented his home Port at Brodhulls on at least 14 occasions over the following 17 years.14 Ibid. 5, 15, 19, 25, 16, 27, 30, 33, 34, 38-40; Rye mss, 60/2, ff. 23, 27, 32v.

In the summer of 1448 Thomas Stoughton was put forward as Rye’s nominee as bailiff at Yarmouth, only to be rejected by the delegates from the other Ports because his normal place of residence was London. Accordingly, Rye was told to choose between three other nominees, of whom Sutton was one, although it is not known whether he was selected.15 White and Black Bks. 24. On the death of the mayor, William Broughton*, at the end of the year, Sutton was elected to take his place. The records show that thereafter when not mayor he was invariably a jurat, and that he was kept busy about the business of his home town and the Ports generally. He sailed to Yarmouth again in 1450, journeyed to London and the court of Shepway to deal with Rye’s affairs in late 1451, and became involved in negotiations for a settlement of the differences between Rye and its member-port of Tenterden, which led to him taking bonds between the two places to the lieutenant-warden at Leeds castle in Kent. As mayor in 1454-5 he sealed the agreement putting to an end the ‘stryves and controversies’ between the two communities.16 Rye mss, 60/2, ff. 19v, 27, 32, 36v. Another matter he dealt with while mayor in that year concerned alleged breaches of the truce with Burgundy: on 16 Sept. 1454 the master of a cogship taken at sea by the Mawdeleyn of Calais made a declaration before him that none of the goods on the vessel belonged to anyone from Holland, Zeeland, Brabant or Flanders, and four days later he and the jurats considered the case of The Hulk and Seynt Maryknyght which had been seized by the Thomas of Winchelsea ten months earlier.17 Ibid. ff. 38, 38v.

All this might imply that Sutton’s own behaviour was unimpeachable. But he was not always law-abiding – indeed, appears to have had a violent temperament. In 1449 he had been in a brawl in which he struck the chest of one ‘Robert’ with his fist, whereupon the injured man drew a two-handed sword out of its sheath. This offence only received local attention; potentially much more serious was Sutton’s indictment before the justices of oyer and terminer holding sessions at Chichester in July 1451. The justices, who were investigating felonies committed during and after Cade’s rebellion in the previous year, were informed that on 1 Aug. 1450 Sutton had broken into property belonging to the vicar of Rye’s parish church, and had stolen grain worth 40 marks, but neither the background to the alleged offence nor the consequences of the charge are revealed. A few years later Sutton fell out with Robert Onewyn, like him one of the leading townsmen of Rye. On 14 Mar. 1456 both were brought to the mayor’s court and bound over in £30 to keep the peace, while Onewyn also had to undertake to behave peaceably towards two of Sutton’s kinsmen. Their bonds were to be forfeit if there was any revival of the ‘debate quarell or stryff of sawte’ between them. Onewyn was later fined 12d. for drawing a dagger against Sutton’s younger namesake at a local stables.18 Ibid. ff. 10, 46, 47v; KB9/122/1. Another quarrel, for which both parties were fined, flared up in 1459-60 between our MP and Babylon Grantford*.19 Rye mss, 60/2, f. 70.

Although Sutton had not been returned to Parliament after 1442, he maintained an association with Master John Faukes, the clerk of the Parliaments, and the latter’s subordinate Thomas Bayen*, the clerk of the Commons. This is not surprising in the case of the latter, who lived at Rye, but is more unexpected with regard to Faukes, whom he joined in Trinity term 1459 in bringing a suit for debt in the court of common pleas against Henry Auger esquire and a husbandman of Newenden, Kent, the farmers of the hospital of St. Bartholomew at Rye.20 CP40/794, rot. 74d. After the end of his mayoralty that year, Sutton continued to take a leading part in the affairs of the town. Around Easter 1460, he accompanied the then mayor, the deputy bailiff, the common clerk and three other jurats of Rye to Dover, after they had been summoned to appear before the warden under ‘gravissima pena’ and at risk of being in contempt of the King; and at Christmas 1462 he was paid for taking letters from the authorities at Rye to Thomas Bayen at Westminster.21 Rye mss, 60/2, ff. 78v, 102v.

Thereafter it is not always easy to distinguish the MP’s activities from those of his younger namesake, who had been engaged in similar activities for the previous 13 years.22 Ibid. f. 12; Cat. Rye Recs. deed 124/6. From 1461 until 1464 or later the two John Suttons served as jurats together, but the records of Rye are deficient for the later 1460s, so it is impossible to say how long they continued to do so, and to discover when the older John died. Although it may have been the former MP who attended Brodhulls in July 1465 and July 1468, it was John ‘junior’ who was sent as a bailiff to Yarmouth on the latter occasion and as a delegate to a Brodhull in the following year.23 White and Black Bks. 53, 57, 59. It was the younger John who was appointed by letters patent of Edw. IV as keeper of Rye on 9 July 1471, and served as mayor of Rye from the following month until Aug. 1472: E. Suss. RO, RYE 45/16; CPR, 1467-77, p. 276; E159/249, recorda Mich. rot. 24. In Mar. 1484 he received a pardon as ‘of Rye, merchant, alias late mayor of Rye, alias esquire and gentleman’ (C67/51, m. 23); and he represented the Port in the Parl. of 1489. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 829, confuses the two men.