COBBEHAY, John, of Bignor and Arundel, Suss.

In a suit for trespass brought in the King’s bench in the mid 1420s by Thomas Poynings, Lord St. John, Cobbehay, one of the defendants, was described as ‘of Bignor, parker’. KB27/662, rot. 32d; 667, rot. 46d. It may well be the case that he was employed at Bignor on the estate formerly belonging to Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel. That is the implication of evidence given in another suit for trespass brought in the court of common pleas a few years later by the Sussex lawyers Edmund Mille* and Richard Jay*. In this instance, as John Cobbehay ‘of Arundel, husbandman’, he was alleged to have illegally entered the plaintiffs’ property at Madehurst, and to have depastured their land with his livestock, removing crops worth £20. The lawyers claimed damages of £25. In the pleadings heard at Easter 1432 Cobbehay asserted that he had been acting as the servant of the legal holders of the land in question, Sir John Bohun and others (apparently those named by the late earl or his widow as feoffees of the estate). Nevertheless, a jury found for the plaintiffs in the next Michaelmas term, and damages of 25 marks were awarded against him. The case was brought on appeal to the King’s bench in the following spring. CP40/686, rot. 255; KB27/688, rot. 1. Meanwhile, Cobbehay had been the defendant in another plea, arising from an alleged debt of £20 owed to John Grene, clerk, and William Croweton, ‘literatus’. He was then called ‘of Arundel, formerly of Bignor, yeoman’. CP40/687, rot. 156.

It is uncertain at what point in his career Cobbehay entered the service of the lord of the borough which he represented in Parliament, John Arundel, de jure earl of Arundel, but in view of his employment on the former Fitzalan estates it would have been quite natural for him to do so as soon as the young lord took possession of his inheritance in 1429. On 2 June 1434 he obtained royal letters of protection as about to cross to France in the earl’s retinue. DKR, xlviii. 298. Arundel died of his wounds at Beauvais a year later, and Cobbehay returned home in time to be elected for his home town to the Parliament which assembled on 10 Oct. 1435. The Sussex elections had been held on 1 Sept., and five days later Cobbehay was a juror at an inquiry conducted at Arundel about the late earl’s moveable goods. E159/212, recorda Mich. rot. 20. It may well be the case that while up at Westminster he was expected to help sort out the affairs of his deceased lord. He is not recorded thereafter.