POLARD, John

Polard was not a native of Dunwich since he purchased the freedom of the borough in the early 1420s, paying an admission fee of 6s. 8d.3 Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. of Dunwich (Suff. Rec. Soc. xxxiv), 120. It is unclear whether he should be identified with John Polard of Barsham, Suff., a ‘gentleman’ active in the 1420s: CP40/658, rot. 263d; C241/219/13. Although he entered Parliament for the first time shortly afterwards, it is unlikely that he had become a burgess solely with a view to becoming an MP, since he took up residence in the town and assumed an active role in its affairs. He is listed under St. Peter’s parish for the purposes of the subsidy which the Parliament of 1429 – of which he was a Member – granted to the King, although he was paying the corporation an annual rent of 4s. 6d. for property situated in that of All Saints’ by the early 1440s.4 Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. 139, Add. Roll 40729.

By the mid 1430s, Polard had become a coroner of Dunwich but, if the John Polard appointed searcher of ships in Great Yarmouth in 1426, this was not his first experience of office. Many coroners, wherever they exercised their office, were lawyers, so it is quite possible that he had received a legal training. The Dunwich return for the first of his seven known Parliaments has not survived, but a contemporary minute book kept by the bailiffs of the town shows that he and Thomas Brantham* were the burgesses elected, since it records the payment of several instalments of their parliamentary stipends. During the accounting year 1424-5, for example, the bailiffs delivered 36s. 8d. to the two men, both of whom also received another 10s. each in the form of tolls granted to them by the town authorities.5 Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. 128. Dunwich’s financial problems meant that it consistently paid its MPs less than the official daily rate of 2s., and Polard received only 4s. per week as an MP in the Parliament of 1426.6 Ibid. 127. Likewise, a continuing shortage of money meant that he and his fellow burgess, Philip Canon*, received a miserly 6s. per week (apparently between them) for attending the assembly of the following year. To support the cost of sending them to Parliament, the Dunwich authorities imposed an extraordinary levy on its inhabitants, to which Polard himself contributed 12d.7 Ibid. 132, 134.

In Hilary term 1437, shortly after his election to his last known Parliament, Polard was named in an Exchequer suit brought by Edmund Wychyngham against Roger Borehed. Wychyngham accused Borehed, a yeoman from Blythburgh, of forcibly entering his close and house at Sotherton in the company of Polard (described as ‘of Dunwich, yeoman’) and three others on the previous 19 Nov. The five men had then, he claimed, depastured £12-worth of his meadow and pasture, taken away livestock (four horses, six cows and 20 bullocks) worth a further £20 and seriously assaulted one of his servants. As a result of these losses, he was prevented from paying the debts he owed the King, his justification for pleading in the Exchequer. The matter was referred to a jury, but it had yet to come to trial over three years later.8 E13/140, rot. 23. There is no evidence that Wychyngham brought a separate suit against Polard (who would have enjoyed immunity from any such action while an MP) after the Parliament of 1437 concluded, although in July 1439 John Godard, a clerk from North Hales, was pardoned for failing to answer a charge of maintaining Borehed and his four associates in their quarrel with Wychyngham.9 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 287-8.