DOWNING, John, of Plympton Erle, Devon.

Few details of Downing’s career have come to light, but, like his parliamentary colleague John Cornish*, he was evidently a local man. He is first heard of in 1444, when he was among the townsmen whom Richard Fortescue (d.1455) accused of encroaching upon his enclosure at Plympton. CP40/734, rot. 200d. The circumstances of Downing’s return to the Commons are uncertain. Plympton Erle was a pocket borough belonging to the Courtenay earls of Devon. In the aftermath of his participation in the duke of York’s unsuccessful bid for power about the King at Dartford in 1452, Earl Thomas had been imprisoned in Wallingford castle, and he was thus probably unable to influence the return of Members to the Parliament that assembled at Reading on 6 Mar. 1453. R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 101, 250. Left to their own devices, the burgesses returned two of their own number, and it may be that in his own home town Downing was in fact a more substantial man than the few references to him that have come to light would suggest. There were several namesakes active in Devon in the period. Downing must be distinguished from the county coroner who was dismissed in 1429 on the grounds of age and ill-health: CCR, 1422-9, p. 280; 1429-35, p. 3; C244/1/49, 2/77. Equally, it is unlikely that he was the Plymouth husbandman whom the Londoner William Totewell sued for an otherwise obscure trespass in late 1426: KB27/662, rot. 8. On chronological grounds, the MP should be distinguished from the successive John Downings who served John, later Lord Dynham, at Ilsington: CP40/799, rot. 27; 800, rot. 185; 802, rot. 259; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/632, AR2/1289.