WILLY, William

The only certain fact concerning the obscure Willy is his election to Parliament. While it is assumed that he was the burgess of that name who attested the election of Hamon Pulham* and Richard Southwell* as the MPs for Yarmouth to the Parliament of 1455, it is impossible to confirm that he was also the William ‘Willys’ (otherwise ‘Willes’) who witnessed the returns of Norfolk’s knights of the shire to the same assembly and to the Parliament of 1459.

While it has been claimed that Willy came from Norwich,1 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 953. it is far from certain that the William Willy (otherwise ‘Wyllys’ or another variant of that surname) who resided in the city in the later fifteenth century was the MP, even though he did have dealings with Yarmouth. Early in Edward IV’s reign, this Norwich William became embroiled in quarrels over a barge which had been distrained in the port at Yarmouth and of which he claimed part-ownership.2 Norf. RO, Gt. Yarmouth recs., ct. roll 1462-3, Y/C 4/167, m. 3d; C1/29/389. Furthermore, in 1463-4, while sheriff of Norwich, he engaged in a dispute with a fellow citizen, William Penyston, who had sued him for debt in Yarmouth’s court, and in 1473 he himself pursued a like suit in the same court against the executor of a former Yarmouth burgess.3 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls 1464-5, 1473-4, Y/C 4/169, m. 6; 178, m. 1; C1/31/500. While it is possible that the MP began his career at Yarmouth before relocating to Norwich, his name was not an uncommon one and it is just as possible that William of Norwich was a namesake. Like Yarmouth’s return to the Parliament of 1455, other evidence from the borough’s court rolls suggests that, at the very least, the MP was a burgess there during his only known Parliament and for over a decade afterwards. In 1457-8, for example, the borough court fined William Willy for pursuing a wrongful suit against another townsman, and for failing to repair a gutter next to his tenement.4 Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll 1457-8, Y/C 4/163, mm. 7, 14. There is no evidence to connect the MP with William Willy of Titchwell, a parish in north-west Norf., miles distant from Yarmouth. This William, who inherited lands at Choseley and Titchwell, was the man who allegedly helped to forge the inq. that challenged Sir John Fastolf’s title to the manor of Titchwell: Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Aleyn, f. 116; P.S. Lewis, ‘Sir John Fastolf’s lawsuit over Titchwell’, Historical Jnl. i. 7-8, 16, 17.