CLERK, John, of Dartmouth and Exeter, Devon and Weymouth, Dorset.

John Clerk was by no means an uncommon name in the fifteenth century, so it might be thought implausible that contemporary John Clerks recorded as living in Dartmouth, Exeter, Weymouth and Salisbury were one and the same person. Yet the peripatetic career of John Clerk the merchant and shipowner is sufficiently well documented for us to be sure that this was indeed the case, and that the same man took up residence in the three ports and the Wiltshire city in sequence. Even so, of his origins there still remains uncertainty. His return to Parliament for the borough of Barnstaple might suggest a relationship to the John Clerk who served as a juror at inquisitions post mortem conducted in the town in 1423. CIPM, xxii. 215-17. Alternatively, his involvement in the government of Exeter in the 1440s might point to kinship with the namesake and grocer who had played a continuous and active part in civic affairs from 1414 until his death in 1426. Exeter mayors’ ct. rolls 9 Hen. V-5 Hen. VI; C67/25. For the probate of that John Clerk’s will, at Easter 1426, see mayor’s ct. roll 4-5 Hen. VI, rot. 28d.

These possibilities notwithstanding, our MP first held local office neither in Barnstaple nor Exeter but in Dartmouth, where he served as one of the bailiffs. At the end of his term of office at Michaelmas 1439 he travelled to Westminster with his fellow bailiff and Richard Carswell the former mayor to render account at the Exchequer for the forfeiture of goods prohibited for export. E159/216, recorda Mich. rot. 29. Although he is not known to have occupied another post in the town, his association with a number of the burgesses as a feoffee of property there in the 1440s and 1450s indicates his continued participation in local affairs, and his residence in Dartmouth at least on occasion. H.R. Watkin, Dartmouth, i. 126, 129, 137. Indeed, his close dealings with the Dartmouth MP John Walsh alias Gregory* may well indicate that he and Walsh were married to sisters; so much is suggested by Walsh’s description of Clerk and his wife as his kinsfolk.

Not long after his bailiffship of Dartmouth ended, Clerk came to the attention of the Crown, being singled out in the spring of 1440 for the responsible post of controller of the search in the principal ports of south Devon as well as in the Cornish port of Fowey and that of Bridgwater in Somerset. His demanding brief was to seize all customable goods discovered being shipped un-cocketed and un-customed from around the south-western peninsula, and to arrest those responsible for smuggling. CPR, 1436-41, p. 392. The appointment presupposed that he was already a shipowner, with a vessel of his own capable of patrolling the seas. It may have been Clerk’s activities as controller of the search which brought him to the attention of the burgesses of the north-Devon port of Barnstaple, who returned him as one of their representatives to the Parliament summoned to meet on 25 Jan. 1442. Shortly before he entered the Commons he relinquished his office, only to take up another post in the customs service. On the day before the Parliament assembled he was appointed collector of customs at Exeter and Dartmouth, in association with Henry Russell alias Gascoigne*, who joined him in the Lower House as an MP for Weymouth. However, while Clerk was confirmed in the post on 20 Mar. that year (the week before the dissolution), Russell was dismissed. CFR, xvii. 200, 201, 203. As a corollary of his position as customer, four months later Clerk was commissioned to requisition vessels for the passage to France of Ralph, Lord Sudeley, the King’s chamberlain. CPR, 1441-6, p. 108. He and his fellow collector Hugh Yon* received rewards for their service in November that year and at Easter following, E403/747, m. 5; 749, m. 9. shortly before Clerk’s promotion in June 1443 to be controller of customs and subsidies in the same two ports. CPR, 1441-6, p. 177. That summer he was called ‘of Dartmouth, gentleman’ when he stood surety in the King’s bench for John Baron, a merchant of Exeter, KB27/729, fines rot. but it was at Exeter rather than Dartmouth that he was most often resident during the next three or more years, if his assumption of the duties of civic government may be taken as a reliable guide to his whereabouts.

Clerk must have been admitted to the freedom of Exeter prior to this date, although no record of his admission survives. A weaver named John Clerk had been admitted on 20 Mar. 1424, but it is unlikely that this was our MP: Exeter Freemen ed. Rowe and Jackson, 44. At Michaelmas 1443 he appeared among the body of electors of the civic officials, and, indeed, was himself chosen to be one of the stewards of the city for the forthcoming year. Exeter mayor’s ct. roll 22-23 Hen. VI, rot. 1d. A break from local office in the term 1444-5 saw him taking on a different and wider administrative role, as royal escheator of Devon and Cornwall, although Exeter was again his official base. It was later alleged that on 13 Nov. 1444 (just a few days after his appointment as escheator) he had arrested Alice, wife of Henry Hull*, a local landowner, and kept her in prison at Exeter for three weeks until she paid him 300 marks to secure her release. The background to this serious allegation, which led to his being summoned to King’s bench to make answer, does not transpire, although it probably had something to do with the wardship of Alice’s son John Speke*. KB27/742, rot. 78d. During that same year, between Michaelmas 1444 and Michaelmas 1445, Clerk shared with John Tylerd* of Exeter a payment of 18s. 6d. for carrying out some unspecified business for the city. Tylerd was one of Exeter’s MPs in the Parliament of 1445, which met for its first two sessions during that accounting period, but the name of his companion in the Commons is not known. Yet while it may be speculated that Clerk was Tylerd’s fellow MP, there is no documentary evidence to prove that this was certainly the case. Before the Parliament met for its third session, on 20 Oct., Clerk had been elected receiver of Exeter, and in November he was also made one of the constables of the local staple. Exeter mayor’s ct. roll 24-25 Hen. VI, rot. 1d; C67/25. He held the latter office until January 1447, but after appearing among the electors to the minor offices in the city at the following Michaelmas he ceased further involvement in Exeter’s government. Exeter mayor’s ct. roll 26-27 Hen. VI, pt. 1, rot. 97. Defending himself in a lawsuit in Easter term 1448, Clerk asserted that he had not been living in Exeter on the previous 20 Sept., as stated in the writ, or ever since; his place of residence was Dartmouth: CP40/748, rot. 313; 749, rot. 405d. He remained controller of customs in the port only until the spring of 1448.

While he had been controller, and contrary to the statutes, Clerk had been engaged in overseas trade on his own behalf. The Exchequer held that in July 1443 (just after his appointment) he had shipped from Topsham 30 sacks of wool without paying the subsidies due, and process was initiated against him a few months later. E159/220, recorda Mich. rots. 21, 21d. Then, in the spring of 1446, a balinger belonging to him was arrested at sea by a royal serjeant-at-arms, as forfeit to the King, brought to Portsmouth, and granted with its cargo of wool, woolfells, cloth and other merchandise to Lord Scales. Presumably the vessel had been used for smuggling, although it is strange that if the royal controller of customs had been discovered to be engaged in such illegal activities he was not immediately dismissed. CPR, 1436-41, p. 437. Shortly before he did leave office, early in 1448, Clerk and a merchant from Bishop’s Lynn were attached to answer at the Exchequer for 200 sacks of wool shipped overseas contrary to statute, and a year later he was summoned to answer regarding a shipment of 28 pieces of tin similarly dispatched. With regard to the wool, said to be worth as much as £1,000 and to have been smuggled from Melcombe Regis in 1444, ‘intelligence’ was produced in the Exchequer in January 1449 that Clerk and the merchant from Lynn had been assisted in their criminal activities by one of the customers, Thomas Doge*. They were not finally cleared of the charge until late in 1451. E159/225, recorda Hil. rots. 18, 20d; 226, Hil. rot. 11; E143/24/7. It may well have been in order to evade the consequences of prosecution and to save his other moveable possessions from forfeiture that in October 1448 Clerk, as ‘of Exeter merchant’, had placed them all in the hands of Adam Moleyns, bishop of Chichester, and Thomas Gay the elder and Thomas Gay the younger, both of whom were citizens and tailors of London. CCR, 1447-54, p. 59. That Clerk had enlisted the support of the Gays at this time is not surprising, for they were closely connected with him as business partners and co-owners of ships; but it is less easy to account for Clerk’s invitation to Moleyns to become involved in his affairs. On the other hand, acquaintance with the bishop, who was then at the centre of government as keeper of the privy seal, may well have worked to Clerk’s advantage. Even so, his service to the Crown by formal appointment and perhaps also his participation in local government came to an end with the decade.

By the time Clerk faced other challenges in the central courts, Moleyns had been murdered, at the beginning of 1450. Not long afterwards Hugh atte Fenne*, the Exchequer official, accused Clerk in the court of common pleas of failing to pay him £40 on a bond entered into in London in April 1448. Clerk responded that on the date in question he had not been in London: rather he had been detained in prison at Dartmouth, and had been coerced into entering the bond under duress. CP40/757, rot. 106. In the summer of 1450, when Cade’s rebellion was at its height, Clerk allegedly joined with some of the leading men of Dartmouth, headed by Robert Wenyngton*, in an assault on the former MP Walter Reynell*, whom they were said to have threatened with death and then held a prisoner. CP40/760, rot. 208d; 761, rot. 200; 766, rot. 122d; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 387-8. Whether he had a personal grudge against Reynell is not revealed. Clerk was called ‘merchant of Exeter’ in the charge brought against him, but ‘alias of Dartmouth’ in a suit for debt initiated by John Hoppyng in the following year; CP40/760, rot. 133. evidently, he continued to use the two ports indiscriminately for his trading activities.

More is revealed about Clerk as a shipowner in the 1450s. In June 1451, when a fleet was assembled at Plymouth to transport Richard Wydeville, Lord Rivers, and his forces to Acquitaine, a number of Clerk’s ships were conscripted. Le Newe Trynyte and Le Margaret, both normally berthed at Dartmouth, joined Le John (of which he was co-owner with the two Thomas Gays), Le James (which he shared with Otto Gilbert), and Le Margarete and Le Christopher of Topsham (both of which belonged in part to William atte Well) in sailing south, their masters and mariners being paid from the customs collected at Dartmouth and London. Clerk himself was assigned to transfer money to them, and was given 100 marks at the Exchequer for this purpose. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 448, 450; E403/784, m. 14. In March 1452 he obtained letters of protection while in the company of Gervase Clifton*, the treasurer of Calais (probably engaged to ship supplies to the garrison), although he failed to set sail from Dartmouth and in July his letters were revoked. CPR, 1446-52, p. 558. Seafaring activities left him open to accusations of piracy on occasion. Bernard Jaff of Portugal complained that Clerk and the crew of his ship Le Trinite seized and spoiled his vessel, laden with goods worth £400, which had been driven towards Dartmouth by a storm. As this was contrary to the alliance between Henry VI and the king of Portugal, orders went out for Clerk’s arrest, these being directed to the mayor of Bristol in January 1455. CPR, 1452-61, p. 225.

It appears to have been at this stage in his career that Clerk set up in business in the Dorset port of Weymouth. Perhaps he had often put in there when sailing through the Channel, but it was only in the late 1450s that he began to be called ‘merchant of Weymouth’, a description that implies he acquired interests in property there. CP40/786, rot. 182d; 788, rot. 256. Besides showing him living at Weymouth or in nearby Melcombe in this period, suits in the common pleas suggest he was in financial difficulties. It was alleged that he owed ten marks to Robert Aiscough, clerk, under a bond made in 1457 at Charminster; and John Wyke II* claimed that he owed him £10 as a debt contracted in the summer of 1460 at Charborough. CP40/829, rots. 351d, 358d. In a pardon Clerk purchased on 4 Apr. 1458 he was given the alternative descriptions of ‘late of Dartmouth, merchant’ and ‘late of Weymouth’. C67/42, m. 23. That he was living in Weymouth in 1460, the year of his second election to Parliament, is clear not only from how he was described in a suit brought in Trinity term that year, CP40/798, rot. 211d. but also, and more crucially, how he was described on the parliamentary return itself, for it was John Clerk ‘of Weymouth’ who sat in the Commons that autumn. There is nothing to indicate where he stood politically in these years of civil war, or of any sign of personal links with Weymouth’s lord the duke of York.

Clerk hastened to secure a general pardon from York’s son Edward IV soon after he came to the throne. In this, dated 8 July 1461, he was called ‘alias Codeman’, an alternative name which he does not seem to have used often. CPR, 1461-7, p. 8. The 1460s were a troubled decade for him, heavily punctuated by litigation instigated by his many creditors. The executors of Thomas Cook I* of Exeter sued him for £23 15s. 8d.; CP40/818, rot. 44; 820, rot. 24; 826, rot. 2. he was outlawed at the suit of William Wodeward, a London goldsmith, for a debt of £6 (although he obtained a pardon of outlawry in 1466); CPR, 1461-7, p. 506. the Dorset lawyer John Newburgh II* relentlessly pursued him for over 11 years regarding the sale of 200 sheepskins first contracted in 1456; and the Aiscough and Wyke suits both continued at least until 1468 (with Clerk once more using the defence that he had been forced to seal bonds to Wyke under duress). CP40/825, rots. 266, 267, 352d; 829, rots. 351d, 358d. It may have been in order to escape from these creditors that Clerk once more moved home; by the mid 1460s he had taken up residence in Salisbury. This much seems clear from a petition sent to the chancellor, Archbishop Neville. A Gascon merchant named Juband Huet alleged that Clerk, formerly of Dartmouth but now living in Salisbury, owed him £115 for a consignment of wine, as was evident from two obligations, one of which had been sealed in Bordeaux and the other in England. Being a foreigner, Huet had no remedy under English common law. C1/33/329.

In a lawsuit of early 1468 Clerk was referred to as the owner of a ship called the Nicholas of the Tower. In the suit William Vernon, a London grocer, alleged that Clerk owed him £26 6s. 8d. under a bond entered two years earlier, although why Clerk’s ownership of the Nicholas was relevant to the case is not explained. Not long afterwards ownership of the Nicholas was also at issue in an action brought in the court of the admiral, the duke of Gloucester, by William Hampton† the London alderman against Thomas Gay the younger as its co-owner. Hampton claimed that Clerk, while acting as Gay’s factor in Bordeaux, had pledged the ship for payment of his debts, but Gay denied that Clerk was his factor, protested that what took place in Bordeaux was beyond the admiral’s jurisdiction, and said that in any case he did not own a moiety of the Nicholas. CP40/826, rot. 385; C1/43/185-8. Intriguingly, the ship bore the same name as the one whose crew had beheaded the duke of Suffolk in 1450, but whether it was indeed the same vessel and whether Clerk had then been its owner has not been discovered.

Some good fortune did come Clerk’s way in his final years. His friend John Walsh of Dartmouth had stipulated in his will in 1446 that all his possessions in Dartmouth should fall to his widow Isabel and then after her death to his relations John and Katherine Clerk. Eventually, after the deaths of both Isabel and Katherine, the Walsh inheritance passed to Clerk alone, and from him it was handed on to his daughter, also called Katherine, who at some point had married his long-term business colleague Thomas Gay the younger. On 3 Dec. 1466 Clerk made over to his son-in-law Gay all his landed holdings in Dartmouth and elsewhere in Devon, as well as those in Somerset and the city of Salisbury, together with all his goods and chattels. C1/32/275, 71/95; Watkin, i. 134; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 403-4. Clerk is last recorded two years later, CP40/829, rot. 358d. and died before December 1474, by which date provision had been made for a chaplain to celebrate mass in the chapel of St. Saviour at Dartmouth for the souls of him and his wife, in association with those of John Walsh and his wife. Property formerly belonging to them in the neighbourhood was set aside to pay the chaplain’s stipend. Watkin, i. 149, 153-4.