Askham, a wealthy and influential London fishmonger, owed much of his early success to his connexion with
William Walworth
†, the celebrated mayor of London, whom he served as an apprentice. He was probably the son of William Askham senior, an obscure Londoner known chiefly through two conveyances made by him in September 1369 and August 1374 of property near Baynard’s Castle.
John Lovekyn
†, passed into the hands of his own widow, Margaret, who made Askham one of her feoffees and appointed him to act as her executor. Her death in, or shortly before, 1399 left Askham in a strong position to purchase this impressive property, which lay between four other tenements just above London Bridge on a site later occupied by the Fishmongers’ Hall. When his executors finally sold the house, then known as ‘Askham’s Place’, for 800 marks in 1432, a tradition that the owners were ‘all shireves and meires each aftir other’ had grown up. Askham’s interest in the neighbouring premises was evidently that of a feoffee-to-uses only, for although Lovekyn’s trustees had conveyed them to him and three associates in August 1394 (after the death of Lovekyn’s widow), other occupants, such as the fishmonger William Brampton I, continued to live and do business there.
Most of Askham’s wealth came from trade rather than property and like the majority of successful city merchants his interests were diverse. Between April 1390 and July 1391, for example, he shipped large quantities of wine, cloth worth over £65 and a consignment of woad valued at almost £50 into the port of London. In February 1401 his commercial expertise was put to use by the Crown, and he served for a brief period as buyer for the royal household, presumably concentrating upon the purchase of fish. By far his largest personal investments were in raw wool for export. The fragmentary nature of the London customs records prevents even the most tentative estimate of the scale of his operations, but he was clearly one of the capital’s leading wool merchants. Over the period 6 Mar. 1397 to 26 Sept. 1398 he obtained royal licences to ship at least 287 sarplers of wool to Calais; between 28 Jan. and 10 Nov. 1400 he sent out a further 105 sarplers; and he appears to have exported even larger consignments during the next few years. Moreover, in March 1409 he was permitted to send a cargo of 22 sarplers from Lewes to Calais, having quite probably been using this port as well from a much earlier date. At the beginning of the 15th century Askham served successively as mayor of the Westminster and Calais Staples — posts which presented the occupant with a unique opportunity to extend his own commercial activities and connexions. Certainly, by June 1410 he was in a position to lend £66 to the King, an advance which appears to have been repaid shortly afterwards.
Besides acting as an attorney and feoffee for Margaret Walworth, in whose affairs he was closely involved for many years, Askham was a party to the property transactions of many prominent Londoners, including John Clifford, Felicity, the widow of John Woodcock (who had made Askham a beneficiary of his will), John, the son of William Tong, and his neighbour, William Brampton I. The latter was Askham’s close friend and business partner: together they played a leading part in the foundation of the perpetual fraternity and guild of St. Peter in the church of St. Peter, Cornhill, in the spring of 1403; and at the time of Brampton’s death four years later they were jointly owed £315 by Simon Camp, a courtier who had been in debt to Askham for some time.
John Hende
†, three of the most powerful men in London.
Because of his wealth and social position, the fishmonger was required to perform a number of services by friends and colleagues, as well as the community as a whole. In February 1396, for instance, he offered joint sureties of £200 on behalf of Thomas Shelley, who was then involved in negotiations over the wardship of his young stepson. One year later he appeared as a mainpernor for John Marchaunt, a London merchant, guaranteeing his readiness to pay customs of £160 to the Exchequer. Presumably because of his experience as an auditor of London, Askham was appointed by the city chamberlain to examine a series of executors’ accounts in February 1399, and towards the end of his life, in November 1413, he arbitrated in a dispute between the mercer, John Lane, and Nicholas Carew, one of his customers.
An alderman of London from 1395 until his death, Askham played a particularly distinguished part in civic life. It is significant that he was the only fishmonger to be elected mayor over the years 1388 to 1411 — a period during which the other city guilds showed considerable hostility towards his own mystery. No doubt his experience of trade, local government and finance outweighed whatever animus may have been felt towards him as the member of an unduly powerful and monopolistic livery company. During his mayoralty, Askham was approached personally by Nicholas Ryssheton, the English ambassador to Flanders, who warned that preparations were afoot for the invasion of England, and urged the people of London to help provision the town of Calais. Askham’s involvement in the wool trade gave him a vested interest in the question of national defence, and he was almost certainly among the merchants of the Calais Staple who subsequently lent money to Henry IV for this purpose.
Askham died between 10 Feb. 1414 and 5 Feb. 1415, and was buried in the church of St. Michael, Crooked Lane. His will contains no references to his own children, although he left bequests to John and Robert Kentwood, his sons-in-law, and William Rokeswell, his stepson. A boy of his was being educated at Winchester College in 1399, perhaps as a result of a connexion which he had established with Bishop Wykeham some six years earlier, when he dined in the episcopal household. But the child evidently died young, and because of this, most of Askham’s property was sold to raise money for pious and charitable uses.