DENE, John, of Grimsby, Lincs.

Dene long held an important place in the affairs of Grimsby. He is not to be confused with his contemporary namesake, an esq. of Barrowby near Grantham: Lincs. Peds. ed. Maddison, 1296. He was elected to his first municipal office, that of auditor, in October 1442 and was serving as one of the mayor’s councillors as late as 1469. By far the most interesting event of his career occurred in 1450. According to an indictment of late October 1452 taken before a powerful oyer and terminer commission, in June 1450 he joined other prominent Grimsby men, including Hugh Edon* and William Yerburgh*, in harbouring two local mariners who had assaulted a merchant of Lübeck at Boston and despoiled his ship of cloth worth as much as £500. This was an episode in the crisis in Anglo-Hanseatic relations precipitated by the notorious seizure by Robert Wenyngton* of the Bay fleet in July 1449, and was one of a number of related incidents involving Grimsby merchants. Indeed, only shortly before Dene’s alleged offence, a royal commission had been issued to inquire into robberies of Hanse and other merchants by men of the town, and Dene stood surety for one of those implicated. KB9/65A/7; CPR, 1446-52, p. 384; CCR, 1447-54, p. 178. More significantly, our MP’s own involvement in crimes against the Hanse provide a likely context for his election, in company with Yerburgh, to the Parliament of November following. For both men it was the only Parliament in which they sat. C219/16/1. At the end of this Parliament Dene was allegedly involved in an offence of another sort. On 31 May 1451, perhaps the same day that Parliament was dissolved, he was among a group of townsmen who assaulted two servants of the county sheriff, Sir William Ryther, at Grimsby. His alleged participation in such offences explain why he sued out a general pardon on 10 Nov. 1452. CP40/762, rot. 338; C67/40, m. 12.

Most of what else is known of Dene’s career relates to his prominent role in the administration of his native borough. On 31 Jan. 1447, for example, he had voted in the town’s parliamentary election, and in the following August he headed a jury to elect four quartermen, the officers responsible for exercising the burgesses’ right to buy merchandise in common for resale to the town’s profit. Bull. IHR, xlii. 217; Grimsby ct. rolls 1/101, 25 Hen. VI. In February 1449 he was among the 23 burgesses who assented to the admission of John, Viscount Beaumont’s servant, Ralph Chandler*, to the freedom of the borough. Not long afterwards he became one of the town’s coroners, an office he was to hold for eight of the next 14 years. In 1453 he fell into dispute with another leading townsman, Richard Asseby*, at least if one may judge from an action of assault he brought against Asseby in the court of common pleas; and soon after he had to tolerate the inconvenience of being sued in the borough court for a debt of 20s. by the keepers of St. Mary’s church and fined 2d. for blocking a town sewer. Grimsby ct. rolls 1/101, 27, 32-33 Hen. VI; CP40/769, rot. 89d. He voted in the mayoral election of 1458 and the parliamentary election of 1463, and sat on the jury choosing borough officers in 1459. Grimsby ct. rolls 1/101, 38 Hen. VI; roll of election of mayor and bailiffs 1/310/1; Bull IHR, xlii. 218. The last reference to him comes in October 1473 when he was one of the pledges for the admission of a local esquire, Bernard Missenden, a retainer of Sir Thomas Burgh†, and his seven sons to the ranks of the town’s burgesses. Grimsby ct. bk. 1/102/1, f. 17v.

No direct evidence survives of Dene’s landholdings and wealth. Since he was occasionally styled ‘of Clee’ it is probable he had lands there. He contributed 12d. to the expenses of the town’s representatives in the Parliament of November 1449 and 10d. to those of a decade later. If these assessments are an accurate reflection of economic standing within the borough he was not among its richest inhabitants. CP40/790, rot. 92d; 798, rot. 38; Grimsby bor. recs., assessments for parlty. expenses 1/612/1, 2 (formerly 1/800/1, 2). Like many other of the townsmen, he had shipping interests. In 1465 he was sued for debt as ‘once of Clee, husbandman, alias of Great Grimsby, mariner’. CP40/817, rot. 181. But he appears, for the most part, to have made his living in general merchandising: for example, in another case of 1458, in which he is styled `chapman’, he was sued by a Boston merchant for refusing to pay for 13 ‘dozens’ of woollen cloths worth £9 16s.; and earlier he had been sued by John Neville* for trading in wine and victuals to the value of £100 when, as mayor in 1445-6 and thus keeper of the assize in those commodities, he was statutorily debarred from doing so. CP40/746, rot. 186; 790, rot. 92d.