EDWARD, John, of Northampton.

John Edward, a goldsmith by trade, first appears in the records in Hilary term 1444 when he was one of a number of townsmen who nominated an attorney in a plea of debt against Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin. This action no doubt arose out of the town’s dispute with its powerful neighbour, but no further details have been traced. CP40/732, att. rot. 1. Three years later he was elected to represent the town in Parliament, and soon thereafter as one of the town’s bailiffs. His next appearance in the records comes in the unexpected source of an approver’s appeal. On 25 May 1454, before the King’s coroner, a yeoman named William Green implicated our MP in three felonious thefts from the churches of Hallaton, Whetstone (Leicestershire) and Long Buckby (Northamptonshire) committed in October 1451. The items allegedly taken were valuable ones: four chalices, two missals, together worth over 28 marks, and, from the church of Long Buckby, a silver cross worth as much as £10. There is no reason to doubt the truth of these allegations, particularly as Edward chose to defend himself by pardon rather than plea, and the offences were no doubt prompted by greed rather than lollard sympathies. In any event the appeal appears to have put him to little trouble. He did not sue out a general pardon until 10 Mar. 1458 and then waited nearly two years before pleading the pardon in the court of King’s bench. KB27/795, rex rot. 29. The rest of his life is poorly documented. The pardon he sued out in 1458 gives ‘late of Hanslope, goldsmith’ as one of his aliases, and he may have held property there (some nine miles south-east of Northampton), perhaps as a lessee. He was alive in 1465, when he served on a jury of the town, but he was probably dead by July 1470, when the bailiffs of Northampton were ordered to levy a small sum recovered against him in a plea of trespass sued in the borough court. The townsmen against whom the sum was to be levied, Edmund Swan and Robert Morwode, were probably his executors. C145/321/3; Northampton Recs. i. 384-5.