John Adam was among the executors of Stephen Adam, his presumed father, and began to pay maltolts in Holyngbroke ward, Romney, in the year following Stephen’s death in 1405. He continued to be assessed for maltolts there until his own death, although after 1413 he was generally exonerated from payment by the town authorities. In the local records in and after 1422 he is usually styled ‘armiger’, perhaps to distinguish him from a tanner of the same name. By then he had become a landowner of some substance; indeed, by 1412 he had already acquired land worth £40 a year in the Kentish hundreds of Marden and Newchurch, while in Sussex he owned more at Hollington and Battle.
Adam’s marriage not only increased his landed holdings but also enhanced his status, for his wife Eleanor was one of two grand daughters of John, 3rd Lord Northwode, who in April 1416, on the death without issue of their brother John, became coheirs to certain of the family estates. These included the manor and advowson of Harrietsham, which the Adams, together with Eleanor’s sister Elizabeth and her husband Peter Catte, successfully recovered in Chancery in May 1420, by which date both women had produced children. The Adam moiety of the manor included at the time of his death some 60 acres of arable land, the advowson on alternate turns, and the profits of the manorial court. The Northwode sisters also inherited the patronage of Wichling rectory, of which Adam acted as co-patron in 1431. Transactions of the years 1429 and 1430 show him dealing with a number of properties in south west Kent held in the right of his wife. In addition, from 1421 to 1429 Adam had also had an interest in the patronage of the chantry chapel of St. Mary at Crauthorne (near Romney), although how he came by it is unclear.
It was in keeping with Adam’s position as a landowner that in May 1417 he took out royal letters of attorney, preparatory to sailing for France in the retinue of Thomas, duke of Clarence. However, his landed interests never led him to neglect the affairs of his native town. While attending the Parliament of March 1416, he had obtained writs ordering the sheriffs of London to respect the Cinque Ports’ general charter granting the barons exemption from tolls; and, when MP in 1423, he procured for Romney a copy of the new articles drawn up in that Parliament to regulate the Council’s handling of petitions by bill. Following the introduction in the Parliament of 1427-8 of an innovatory tax on parishes, he was one of the four delegates whom the Ports, at a Brodhull in May 1428, selected to petition for their exemption from it, as from more traditional taxes. He accordingly twice rode up to London, first to obtain counsel’s advice, and then over a connected matter raised by Sandwich. During his sixth Parliament, in 1429, he received payment for expenses incurred for 12 days spent in London as one of the barons attending Henry VI’s coronation.
When sent as one of the Cinque Ports’ bailiffs to the Yarmouth herring fair in 1430, Adam became a victim of the obstructiveness with which the men of Great Yarmouth all too frequently received their unwelcome guests. The bailiffs of the town, Richard Ellis and
John Pynne
†, refused to publish a writ which Adam tried to deliver to them on 9 Oct., ordering that the Ports’ delegates should enjoy their customary liberties in peace; nor would they let Adam and his colleagues sit to hear cases in the guildhall unless they themselves could adjudicate with them; and when, three days later, the Ports’ bailiffs set about keeping the peace of the fair and surveying the sale of herring, as they were entitled to do, Ellis and Pynne came with an armed following and assaulted them. The Ports immediately laid a bill of complaints before the King’s Council, and Adam was among those delegated to conduct the suit. Over the next four years he received a number of payments towards its costs.
Adam died on 6 Aug. 1440, being survived by his widow Eleanor and sons Thomas (c.1423-1444) and William (c.1432-1453). Eleanor retained their landed holdings as her jointure until her death in 1452, whereupon they descended in William’s line.