ESSHING, Thomas, of Arundel, Suss.

Thomas was probably a descendant, perhaps the son, of John Esshing, who had represented Arundel in the Parliament of 1399 and was still living in 1427. Another kinsman, Richard Esshing, had been a tenant of the Fitzalan earls of Arundel at the turn of the century, paying rent for a house and land in Offham, just outside the town. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 34; Arundel ct. roll, M41; Two Fitzalan Survs. (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxvii), 131. The full extent of Thomas’s own landed holdings is not recorded, but by final concords registered in the court of common pleas early in 1450, while the Parliament in which he represented Arundel was in progress, he acquired from John Hull, the London grocer, and his wife Joan four messuages, two tofts, 13 acres of land and six and a half acres of meadow in Arundel, Offham and South Stoke. CP25(1)/241/90/11; E210/9673. Before his election he had been active as a litigant in the same court. In the summer of 1445 he had sued a mercer from Arundel for a debt of 20 marks, and in Easter term 1449 he had begun a number of suits, including one against a local sawyer, to recover sums of money amounting to £12. At the same time, described as ‘formerly of Arundel, gentleman’ he was the defendant in a plea of debt for £5, brought by John Michelgrove* the former shire-knight. CP40/738, rot. 511; 753, rots. 95, 196. Election to the Parliament meeting at Westminster provided him with an opportunity to deal with such personal matters in the law courts, although the third session was held at Leicester. It was hastily dissolved in early June 1450 when news reached the assembly of the outbreak of Cade’s Rebellion. Esshing was present at the shire court at Chichester on the following 8 Oct. to attest the Sussex returns to the Parliament immediately succeeding his own, summoned to address the crisis.

Esshing was elected mayor of Arundel for at least three terms. During the first, in November 1454, he organized the collection of contributions towards urgently-needed repairs to the causeway and bridge over the Arun, on which the town’s trade depended. As one of the leading burgesses he was party to the borough’s returns to the successive Parliaments of 1459 and 1460. On the former occasion the indenture was drawn up at Arundel with Thomas Tresham*, the sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, on one part, and the mayor and just four named burgesses on the other. On the latter, Arundel’s return was completed on 28 Aug. 1460 in the county court at Chichester, this time recorded in an indenture made between the sheriff and the mayor of Arundel and six named burgesses. Bodl. Chs. Suss. a. 2, no. 72; C219/16/1, 5, 6. Esshing also came to be well regarded beyond the confines of his home town. He was asked by Thomas Taupener to be a trustee of lands in West Grinstead and elsewhere, which properties he conveyed to Taupener’s widow in 1453; W. Suss. RO, Add. mss, 4368. and in October 1464 he acted as an attorney for Edward Berkeley esquire and others for the conveyance of a croft in Bensted. CAD, i. B500. Berkeley was among the feoffees to the use of William, earl of Arundel, who by the earl’s precept granted Esshing lands in Arundel, Madehurst, Tortington, South Stoke and Offham in May 1469. Presumably, these were the lands the MP held as the earl’s tenant. E210/9672. His relations with the prior of Boxgrove were less satisfactory, for later that year the prior sued him and a kinsman, a chaplain named Peter Esshing, for a debt of over £11. He is last recorded on the occasion of his final election as mayor on 3 Oct. 1475. CP40/833, rot. 44d; Arundel ct. roll, M25.