CLOPTON, Robert (d.1448), of London and Clopton, Cambs. and Fornham, Suff.

The Cloptons were established in and around the Cambridgeshire village from which they took their name by the late thirteenth century. VCH Cambs. viii. 34-40; W.D. Palmer, ‘Hist. Clopton’, Cambridge Antiq. Soc. xxxiii. 23-32. By the mid fourteenth century, however, the family had relinquished many of its holdings in Cambridgeshire and their interests there were only to be re-established through the efforts of Robert after he had risen to prominence as a London draper and alderman. As a consequence, little is recorded of Clopton’s immediate family, and the suggestion that his father was named Thomas, given in a much later source, does not find corroboration in contemporary documents. Stowe 860, f. 52. There is abundant evidence, too, that the Cambridgeshire Cloptons were closely connected with their more prominent namesakes at Long Melford and Kentwell in Suffolk, whose members included Sir Walter Clopton c.j.Kb, of Melford and his kinsman Sir William Clopton (d.1446) of Kentwell. Robert’s precise relationship to these men and their families has not been discovered, but from an early point in his career he was concerned in property transactions in that county: at various points in the 1420s he was associated with William Clopton, one of his Suffolk relatives, in conveyances of the manors of Cosford Hall and Pond Hall in Hadleigh, part of the inheritance of Thomas, son of Helming Leget†. CP25(1)/224/114/3, 35; CFR, xv. 225, 256; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 460-1; Copinger, iii. 169; E159/205, brevia Hil. rot. 12d; 206, brevia Mich. rot. 30d. For the Suffolk Cloptons see Vis. Suff. (Harl. Soc. lxi), 117.

These early forays into the Suffolk property market occurred at a time when Clopton was also beginning to make his mark in London, where by the early 1420s he had obtained the freedom of the city as a draper. Links between the Suffolk Cloptons and the London drapers were strong: Elizabeth, sister of John Clopton of Long Melford, was the second wife of the prominent draper John Gedney*, and it is conceivable that Clopton made his way to London as a result of these ties. For this correction to The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 170-3, see Med. London Widows ed. Barron and Sutton, 174, n. 33. In 1423-4 he was listed among a group of drapers established in Candlewick Street, and contributed the sum of 40s. to a levy raised by the Drapers’ Company. The following year he made a similar donation to the company’s coffers, and in 1433-4 the wardens’ accounts record him presenting an apprentice. A.H. Johnson, Hist. Drapers’ Co. i. 293, 299, 324.

For a man of his wealth and standing surprisingly little is recorded of Clopton’s business dealings, either in the capital or elsewhere. His name is notable by its absence from the customs accounts of the port of London, through which many of his fellow drapers, including men such as Gedney and John Norman*, exported cloth to the continent. Similarly, there is no evidence that Clopton was supplying drapery to the Great Wardrobe. It is possible, therefore, that he was engaged principally in the domestic trade in cloth, buying it from regional producers and then selling in the London markets. Here too there is scanty evidence for his activities, and so it is difficult to reconstruct the scope and nature of his business dealings. The few transactions which do survive mainly show him active in the provision of credit to his fellow Londoners, although in 1440 there is isolated evidence of his purchase of two butts of Rumney wine from the Venetian Bertuccio Contarini. In January 1441 John Dobyll, a fellow draper, made a gift of his goods and chattels to Clopton and others, probably after he had bought merchandise from them, and similar gifts were made to him by members of other crafts, indicating that he was not just in the business of supplying goods to his fellow drapers. H. Bradley, Views of Hosts of Alien Merchants, 36; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 50, 438; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 266, 276.

The success of Clopton’s business dealings was reflected in his acquisition of property, much of it outside the capital. In 1436 his income from land was estimated to be as much as £83 p.a. from holdings in London, Middlesex, Suffolk and Kent, and his property in Cambridgeshire probably added significantly to this figure. S.L. Thrupp, Merchant Class Med. London, 380; E179/238/90; Palmer, 28. His first acquisitions appear to have been in western Suffolk, close to the Clopton family residences at Long Melford and Kentwell. He obtained the manor of Coddenham Hall on his marriage to Felicia Aleyn. The year of the marriage is not recorded, but it is probable that it and the settlement took place in the mid or late 1420s. The manor was subsequently conveyed to a group of feoffees, including two close relatives, Geoffrey Clopton and his son John, both of whom were also active in Cambridgeshire. Copinger, i. 28-29; Harl. Chs. 47 A29, 48 D18; Palmer, 24-27. Clopton’s 1st wife is not to be confused with another Felicia Clopton who died in 1409. Her husband was a different Robert Clopton, probably a relative, who was a London carpenter: Guildhall Lib. London, commissary ct. wills, 9171/2, f. 143. Later, Clopton acquired property in Bury St. Edmunds and in the nearby villages of Fornham, Fornham All Saints and Fornham St. Martin. In 1445 he sold these holdings to John Gerveys of Bury for the sum of 400 marks. In an indenture drawn up before the sale Clopton agreed to pledge his manor of Wendy in Cambridgeshire as security for the delivery of the other properties. CAD, ii. C3584. His connexion with this part of Suffolk dated back to at least 1431 when the parson of Fornham All Saints acted for him and Felicia as a feoffee of holdings in Shimpling and Alpheton, villages which lay between Bury and Long Melford. Part of this property, a messuage in Shimpling, had been in Clopton’s possession by 1424, when Clopton sued a former feoffee for his failure to release his title. CP25(1)/224/118/21; C1/4/96. To the west of Long Melford Clopton also held property at Hadleigh known as ‘Baynes’, which he and one Thomas Benet had acquired in 1428 from Thomas Baynes of Hadleigh. The manor of Toppesfield Hall also lay near Hadleigh and was one of the manors which passed to the Kentwell branch of the Cloptons. By 1437 Robert appears to have become a feoffee of the manor, possibly on behalf of Sir William. CP25(1)/224/114/25; C1/10/89; CCR, 1435-41, p. 136; Copinger, iii. 164-6.

Yet despite all this activity in Suffolk, it was in the adjoining county of Cambridgeshire, his family’s ancestral home, that Clopton appears to have concentrated his efforts in building up a substantial estate. Most complex was the acquisition of the manor of Clopton Bury, which by the 1420s was divided between three families. In 1431 Clopton acquired a third part of the manor from Robert Fitzralph and his wife Margaret, while in 1445 he was able to obtain another half of a third from Gilbert Hore*. The remainder was, however, to elude him in his lifetime, and it was only acquired later by a namesake, Robert Clopton (d.1471), the son of John and grandson of Geoffrey. CP25(1)/30/97/7, 98/19; VCH Cambs. viii. 34-36. Palmer, 23-32, erroneously concludes that the younger Robert and his three brothers were the MP’s illegit. sons. The nearby manor of Rowses was more easily secured. It had once been held by Clopton’s probable ancestor, Hugh, but had since passed to the Rous family from which it took its name. By the fifteenth century it was in the hands of Richard Hasilden†, but in 1431 Clopton managed to acquire a reversionary interest, and he gained full possession in 1445 when William Hasilden, Richard’s grandson, quitclaimed to him his title in Rowses, as well as in other lands and tenements in Clopton, East Hatley and Crawden. CP25(1)/30/97/7; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 289-90; VCH Cambs. viii. 34-39. By this latter date Clopton had rounded off his holdings with the manors of Wimpole and Wendy, formerly held by the Gambon family. VCH Cambs. ii. 42; viii. 137.

Elsewhere, Clopton was also busy acquiring property in London’s hinterland in Kent, Essex and Middlesex. CCR, 1435-41, p. 249. By September 1436, with the aid of a group of feoffees that included John Reynwell*, Thomas Burgoyne* and the rector of Fornham church, he had purchased lands and tenements in the parish of St. Mary Matfelon in Whitechapel, Stepney and Hackney, as well as woodland at Barking in Essex, which had formerly belonged to John Gosebourne. The ‘great place’ at Whitechapel was in fact Clopton’s main residence outside London and passed after his death to his daughter Alice and her husband Henry Chichele†. Its location was mentioned by a contemporary chronicler who referred to ‘the fylde wytheowte Algate at the mylys ende besyde Clopton ys Place’. A garden of some one and a half acres lay to the east of the property and was subsequently leased out at a substantial rent of 20s. p.a. CAD, i. C373, C549; vi. C4713; Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 192; C147/105.

It is likely that Clopton’s purchase occurred at about the time of his second marriage, to Clarice the widow of a London salter named Thomas Scot, whose executor Clopton had been. The date of the marriage is not recorded, but it probably took place in about 1432 or 1433, as Clopton’s first wife Felicia and Scot were both still alive in 1431. Corp. London RO, jnl. 3, ff. 175, 180v. The marriage was to be short lived, for on 3 Feb. 1435 Clarice made a short will. Under its terms, a tenement in the parish of All Hallows Bread Street which she had brought to her second husband was to be sold and the proceeds used to maintain a chantry in the parish church for four years. London hr 164/45, 167/51. This still left Clopton with city property in the parish of St. Nicholas Shambles, Ibid., 163/34, 174/4, 15; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 272; 1437-57, p. 90. in Birchin Lane in the parish of St. Michael Cornhill, and more in the parishes of St. Benet Gracechurch Street and St. Edmund Lombard Street. These latter properties were acquired by Clopton and associates including Burgoyne and William Estfield*, from Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury and others, which may suggest that they formed part of the settlement for the marriage of Clopton’s daughter to the archbishop’s great-nephew and namesake. E211/275.

Clopton enjoyed a short, but highly successful career within London’s government. It is significant that his period of greatest activity in the city was from the mid 1430s onwards, which may suggest that his marriage to Clarice Scot, however, short lived, had induced him to spend more time in the capital. Nothing in fact is recorded of him in the city records before February 1434 when he was among those appointed to levy and collect the subsidies granted in the recent Parliament. Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 177. Despite his apparent lack of administrative experience in London he was chosen as an alderman for Lime Street Ward later that year, an indication of his standing in the city at the time. He was elected as one of the sheriffs in 1435, and in November 1436 attested the election of the city’s MPs for the first time. Further appointments came his way in 1437: in May he and Robert Large* were chosen by the court of aldermen to audit the accounts of the executors of John St. John, a prominent tailor and cloth-dealer, and in September he was elected to the first of two consecutive terms as one of the city’s four auditors. Ibid. 212.

Clopton’s sole election as an MP occurred on 23 Oct. 1439. It seems clear that the city regarded this Parliament with some concern as the other Members were the newly-knighted William Estfield, the future alderman Geoffrey Feldyng*, and the city’s distinguished common clerk, John Carpenter II*. Before the start of the first session on 12 Nov. the four men were briefed at a meeting of the court of aldermen, and during the second session, held at Reading, the city government considered sending the recorder to assist them with the prosecution of the city’s business. In the event the court chose to send a letter of instruction to Estfield. In the meantime Clopton himself attended a meeting of the court of aldermen on 1 Feb., one of the few occasions when an alderman MP did so while Parliament was in session, and it is likely that he reported back on the proceedings in Parliament. Unfortunately it is unclear what so vexed the city during this assembly. The only measure of direct relevance to London was the limited extension of the powers of the aldermen as justices to control stretches of the Thames, but this can hardly have merited such a keen interest in events. More likely is that the city’s merchants had come together in an effort to put pressure on the government to introduce stricter controls on the activities of alien traders. As well as making avoidance of the Calais staple a felony, the measures enacted by Parliament included the revival of the ‘hosting’ regulations, which required alien merchants to operate under the scrutiny of ‘hosts’ (who would have access to all their transactions), and to use their profits to buy English merchandise. Other bills were less successful, including one which tried to limit the trade of foreign merchants from beyond the straits of Gibraltar to imports only. Jnl. 3, ff. 25v, 29, 34, 35v, 37v; C.M. Barron, ‘London and Parliament.’, Parlty. Hist. ix. 367; PROME, xi. 291-3, 303-9.

After the end of the Parliament, Clopton was kept busy serving on a number of civic committees which met between July 1440 and February 1441. These included four separate committees which dealt with the finances and maintenance of London Bridge. Jnl. 3, ff. 46, 59, 60v, 67, 68v, 76v; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 253. By the autumn of 1441, therefore, Clopton had acquired a good deal of experience of London’s government in a remarkably short period of time. His election as mayor on 13 Oct. that year was in many respects entirely appropriate for a man of his standing. In the event, however, the election was to be long remembered for other reasons, connected with a serious dispute between Clopton’s company, the Drapers, and their rivals the Tailors. For these events see Barron, ‘Ralph Holland and the London Radicals’, The Med. Town ed. Holt and Rosser, 166-72. It had begun with the Tailors’ acquisition in 1439 of a controversial charter which was alleged to infringe the rights of search of both the Drapers and the city government, but had escalated during the mayoralty of John Paddesley in 1440-1. The Tailors’ champion was Ralph Holland, a tailor alderman who had a history of challenging the established order, and who came to represent the ambitions of many artisans in London who wished to participate more fully in the government of the city. Holland was an unsuccessful candidate for the mayoralty in 1439 and 1440, and in the autumn of 1441 made his third bid for the office. Clopton and Holland were chosen as the two candidates by the freemen gathered in Guildhall, and then the aldermen retired to deliberate in private. Their choice was Clopton, and a contemporary chronicler recorded the events which followed:

And when the mair brought downe the said Robert upon his Right hand, as the custume is, certeyn Taillours and other hand craftymen cried: ‘Nay, nay, not this man but Rawlyn Holand’, wherfore the mair, John Paddesley, sent those persones that so cried vnto Newgate where as they abide a long while and were punysshed for their mysse demeanour. Chrons. London ed. Kingsford, 154.

Clopton’s election dealt a blow not only to Holland’s hopes of high office, but also to the cause of the Tailors and their wider suppporters in the city. Proceedings against some of the leading trouble-makers were begun in October and November, after which Clopton was able to turn his attention to the dispute between his own company and the Tailors. The result was that in August 1442 the King formally suspended the rights of search granted to the Tailors three years earlier, and in addition sent letters patent to Clopton, confirming the mayor’s ancient rights to supervise the city’s misteries. This meant that the Tailors faced the very real threat of having their craft scrutinized by a representative of their bitter rivals, the Drapers. Hand in hand with this went a conservative reaction against those who wished to widen participation in civic elections: shortly before the next mayoral election, when John Hatherley* was elected, a royal writ was sent to the mayor and sheriffs which, referring to the disturbances of 1441, proclaimed that no-one was to attend elections unless specifically summoned. Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 260, 274-5.

In the meantime, of course, the routine business of civic government had to continue. While mayor, Clopton contributed the sum of £20 to a corporate loan made to Henry VI, and headed two separate delegations of aldermen which were sent to see the King. Clopton also remembered his responsibilities to his ward, for in March 1442 he made good a shortfall of £8 on the ward assessment which Langbourne had failed to raise. Jnl. 3, ff. 115v, 137, 144-144v. Once he had relinquished office Clopton was also canny enough to realize that he was vulnerable to malicious lawsuits from what was doubtless a growing band of opponents in London, and so in November 1442 he secured a royal pardon in respect of all offences committed by him during his mayoralty, and of all actions and quarrels in which he was involved. CPR, 1441-6, p. 136.

Although Clopton continued to be active in London after the end of his mayoralty, it seems that he was paying increasing attention to his interests in Cambridgeshire, where he had been added to the county bench in 1443. Before long, however, he was beginning to withdraw from public life. In April 1445 he secured letters patent exempting him from holding offices and from serving on assizes and juries. In the meantime he became embroiled in a dispute with the abbot of Stratford, evidently over the administration of a chantry in the abbey church. The matter was first put to the arbitration of the mayor and aldermen in August 1445, and subsequently Thomas Burgoyne and Thomas Billing* were asked to hear the evidence. CPR, 1441-6, p. 345; jnl. 4, ff. 14v, 91v, 101v, 140v.

By the beginning of 1448 Clopton was evidently ailing. He made his will on 14 Jan. and was dead by 22 Feb. when an election was held for the vacant Lime Street ward. Reg. Stafford, ff. 162, 164; jnl. 4, f. 208v. The will was granted probate on 20 Mar. Under its terms, the draper was to be buried in the parish church of St. Peter Cornhill. He left all his goods and chattels in his house at Whitechapel and on his manors at Wimpole and Wendy to his only child Alice, who was also left a third share of his other plate and jewels. Another third was left to his widow, Margery, while the rest was to be devoted to the payment of the testator’s debts. Among Clopton’s other bequests was the sum of 100 marks to his grand-daughter, Margery. His executors were the city chamberlain, John Chichele (Henry’s father), Thomas Burgoyne and John Clopton, son of his kinsman Geoffrey. They were left Clopton’s interest in his remaining term in his messuages in Birchin Lane, the issues of which were to be used to pay £12 to two almsmen whom Clopton was looking after. Further testamentary arrangements were recorded in a deed in which he left an annual rent of £6 13s. 4d. from his tenements in St. Benet Gracechurch Street and St. Edmund Lombard Street to the church of St. Mary at Clopton in Cambridgeshire. This was to be used to fund a perpetual chantry in the church, the chaplain of which was to be chosen by the mayor of London. If the arrangement failed, the chantry was to be located in London’s Guildhall chapel. Another chantry was established at Clopton Bury with £5 p.a. which the Drapers’ Company was made responsible for paying. E211/275; VCH Cambs. viii. 40; Ely Diocesan Remembrancer (1906), 88, 136; CP40/752, rot. 465d; 755, rot. 450d.

Margery, Clopton’s widow, survived her husband until her death in 1462, when she was buried alongside him in St. Peter Cornhill. Commissary ct. wills, 9171/5, f. 338. The Clopton estates were split between Robert’s daughter, Alice, and his nearest male heir, the younger Robert, son of his executor John Clopton. Alice evidently secured the lion’s share, including the Clopton residence and other estates at Whitechapel, Stepney and Hackney. In March 1460, Thomas Burgoyne conveyed these holdings to her, with successive remainders to Robert Clopton junior and his two brothers. Alice also acquired the manors of Wimpole and Wendy, as well as Codenham Hall, and these subsequently passed into the Chichele family. CAD, vi. C4713; C147/105; VCH Cambs. viii. 137. The younger Robert, by contrast, seems to have acquired his namesake’s portions of the manor of Clopton Bury, the manor of Rowses and a messuage and 40 acres of lands in Clopton. Robert eventually died seised of these estates in 1471, leaving as his heir his brother William. CP25(1)/30/94/11; C140/38/55; VCH Cambs. viii. 34-36; Palmer, 29-32. The failure of any of Robert’s brothers to produce male heirs resulted in a series of lawsuits in the late 15th and early 16th centuries: C1/124/45, 125/78, 238/39-40.