CHAMBERLAIN, William

More can be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 513-14. Besides acting as an attorney on behalf of clients, Chamberlain brought suits in the court of common pleas on his own account. For example, in 1422 he sued William Overey* together with a carpenter and a mason for forced entry into his house in Southampton and theft of timber worth £10; in the Michaelmas term of 1435 (when up at Westminster for his tenth Parliament) he appeared in court in person to bring pleas against a butcher from Petersfield, two husbandmen from Totton and others including a goldsmith, for debts amounting to over £34; and he was again a plaintiff four years later. CP40/647, rot. 94; 699, rots. 288, 601; 715, rots. 359d, 620d. That his first wife was indeed the widow of Henry Keswick is made clear from a suit she and her fellow executor of Keswick’s will brought in the common pleas in 1426. CP40/661, rot. 97.

Chamberlain was among the lawyers whom the warden and fellows of Winchester College paid for their counsel: he received an annual fee of one mark from 1429 until the year before his death. T.F. Kirby, Annals of Winchester, 189; N. and Q. ser. 12, i. 361-3. He was still recorder of Southampton when returned to his last Parliament in 1442. His parliamentary wages on that as on other occasions were 2s. a day, which amounted to £6 16s. for 68 days’ service, but this was not paid until 21 July, nearly four months after his return home. Southampton steward’s bk., SC5/1/6, f. 7. His status as a landowner gave him armigerous rank and a substantial income, so it is not surprising that he was twice distrained for refusing to take up knighthood.