SNELLING, Richard

There is a possibility that the MP was the Weymouth tailor or draper of this name who in the 1430s was sued for a debt of £10 in the court of common pleas by John Hore alias But*, the Bridport merchant, and for another of 37 marks owed to a man from Somerset,1 CP40/699, rot. 57d; 712, rot. 374. but it is more likely that he was a younger namesake.

Whether the MP was engaged in trade has not been ascertained, but it is clear that he was a man who could be trusted to carry out the business of merchants of his native county both at Westminster and overseas. So much may be deduced from an undated list of expenses which he ran up in their service. He appears to have been given the task of securing the restitution of The Nicholas (of which William Eustace was master) from the duke of Brittany, whose subjects had seized it. Snelling and William Oliver I*, a leading merchant of Bridport and Weymouth, were given the responsibility of seeking help from the government. Snelling rode to London, ‘to sywe to the Kyng and the counseyll’, and in the process of presenting three bills he made payments for the privy seal, to the King’s secretary (for ‘endytyng’ a letter), to the secretary and a squire of ‘my lord of Somerset’, and for letters to the chancellor. One missive to the King had to be freshly ‘maket and ywryte’ three times, at a cost of 10s., and copies of the bills cost a further 20s. Various squires and gentlemen had to be plied with wine, and bribes offered to obtain access to those in power. Snelling alone paid out £5 15s. 2d., as well as running up costs of £2 3s. 6d. for a voyage to Brittany he undertook personally on the same business. Together, he and Oliver ‘payed for the merchandises’ £13 6s. 8d. A reference to a gift of fish to the chancellor when he was at Hooke in Dorset suggests that all this occurred during the chancellorship of Archbishop Stafford, whose family home was at Hooke – although the manor-house became the seat of James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, in the late 1440s and the 1450s.2 C47/34/1/17. Partially printed by J.F. Baldwin, The King’s Council, 533-4.

Snelling was present at the county court at Dorchester for the elections to the Parliament of February 1449, then standing surety for the two MPs chosen by Weymouth. Both men were outsiders: Henry Filongley*, who hailed from Warwickshire, was a retainer of the earl of Wiltshire, and William Tyrell II* of Essex was of the affinity of the duke of York, the lord of the borough. Filongley’s nephew Thomas Froxmere*, another outsider belonging to the earl’s affinity, provided mainprise for Snelling’s appearance in the Commons in 1455.3 C219/15/6; 16/3. There is, however, no documentary evidence to confirm that Snelling himself was attached to either the earl or the duke, nor that his return to the Parliament which met after the Yorkist victory at St. Albans, had any political significance. Even so, Weymouth was the duke’s town, and its inhabitants played an active role in assisting his son Edward to take the throne in 1461. On 16 Dec. that year the new King granted his tenants in Weymouth the enormous sum of £100, to compensate them for losses sustained on his behalf. The money was to be received from the customers of Poole and Weymouth. However, six years later, on 28 Jan. 1467, after the men of Weymouth had surrendered these letters patent, new ones were issued, bestowing the grant instead on seven named tenants. They included Snelling.4 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 110, 540. Evidently, he had maintained a position of authority in the town. In the following year he and another of those named in the grant, Nicholas Abbot, accounted at the Exchequer for wool and skins confiscated for the Crown.5 E101/457/33.

It may be surmised that the Dorset merchant Henry Snelling was a kinsman of our MP. Henry was active in the late 1460s shipping different varieties of cloth, as well as grain and hops, from Poole, in the Mary of Poole and Le George of Wareham, and in October 1475 he was recorded exporting lambskins worth 40 marks on the Margaret of Weymouth.6 E122/26/6; 119/9.