STURT, Philip

Sturt’s family probably took their name from the village of Start in the parish of Cornwood, where they held property, but they also owned a number of tenements in Plympton Erle itself, a few miles away.1 C142/42/137; 84/31; C139/43/1. Among the more obscure men to represent Plympton in Parliament in Henry VI’s reign, Philip was a carpenter by trade. Little is known of his career, although in the mid 1450s he can be shown to have been in dispute over property rights in Brixton with the more important John Dobbe*.2 CP40/775, rot. 205. Sturt’s modest standing may be indicative of the difficulties experienced by the burgesses of Plympton in finding men willing to undertake the arduous journey to a Parliament summoned to the provincial backwater of Cambridge, before being moved to the equally distant Bury St. Edmunds.