FERIBY, Robert, of Frodingham and Barton-upon-Humber and Burton-upon-Stather, Lincs.

Feriby enjoyed a short but successful career as a local lawyer. There is little precise information about his family background. The Lincoln MP is to be distinguished from his namesake of Reedness in the W. Riding, who fought in France in the campaigns of 1415 and 1417, acted as an attorney for Sir Henry Brounflete, later Lord Vessy, at Yorks. elections between 1419 and 1432, and made his will in Nov. 1436: E101/44/30/3, m. 4; 51/2, m. 41; Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. xci. facing p. 237; Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 180n. It is probably also safe to assume that our MP was not the tax collector of 1428 in the city of York, who was later in dispute with Thomas Leverton over land jointly purchased there and was remembered in the will of a York merchant in 1444: CFR, xv. 216; C1/11/36; Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 93. It is, however, worth noting that the Feribys of York were, like our MP, associated with Barton-upon-Humber: Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 179n.; CP25(1)/280/158/31. He was, however, certainly related to an esquire of Henry IV, John Feriby of Barton-upon-Humber in north Lincolnshire, and to one of the coroners of that county during the 1430s, Thomas Feriby. Both John and Thomas acted with him in a final concord of November 1419 by which he acquired the manor of Darby near Burton-upon-Stather. Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. iii. 58-59; CP25(1)/144/155/20. There is no evidence to identify this John with his more important namesake, MP for Surr. in 1425, 1429 and 1433. This was an addition to his inheritance in the north of the county. In the subsidy returns of January 1432, when he himself was one of the commissioners, his lands at Burton-upon-Stather and in the two nearby vills of West Halton and Coleby were valued, rather notionally, at five marks p.a.; and other evidence suggests that he also inherited land in the same neighbourhood at Frodingham and Barton-upon-Humber. Feudal Aids, iii. 364.

The first reference to Feriby occurs in November 1410, when he was named as a mainpernor in Chancery along with two prominent Lincoln men, John Bigge† and Robert Walsh*. His first appointment to an ad hoc commission of local government followed three months later and when Sir Robert Hilton* became sheriff in November 1414 he took up the responsible office of under sheriff. Clearly he was already well established among the community of minor local lawyers who filled such roles, and it may be that he had a particular connexion with Hilton, whose election to Parliament he attested on 9 Mar. 1416ilton. CCR, 1409-13, p. 178; CPR, 1408-13, p. 313; CIMisc. vii. 578; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. i. 70. His appointment to the county bench in February 1419 marked a further advancement, but two months later he found himself on the wrong side of the law. He was indicted before royal commissioners of inquiry for an offence as under sheriff. He had awarded bail to the vicar of Haxey, John Lound, indicted before him as a false coiner at the sheriff’s tourn on 14 Apr. 1415. His offence here was twofold: not only was bail on so serious a crime a contravention of the first statute of Westminster, but he had compounded the offence by taking a large bribe of £60 from Lound. The indictment was sent to the Exchequer rather than to the court of King’s bench, and it is likely that he suffered a financial penalty. CPR, 1416-22, p. 455; CIMisc. vii. 578.

This indictment did not interrupt Feriby’s career. Indeed, his acquisition of the manor of Darby in November 1419 enhanced his status. On 16 Nov. 1420 he was named as the Lincolnshire escheator, and nine days later he headed the list of 16 attestors to the county parliamentary return. He was serving as escheator when, in the following March, he was one of the parishioners of Barton-upon-Humber who concluded a dispute with the abbot of Bardney, the rector of the parish church, over the extent of the abbey’s financial responsibility for the cost of protecting crops. CFR, xiv. 339; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. i. 70; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 147-8, 187-8.

At about this time a second marriage extended Feriby’s landed interests beyond the north of his native county. His second wife was one of the four daughters and coheiresses of a Nottingham merchant but, of greater importance for our MP’s career, she was the widow of an important citizen of Lincoln. The marriage took place between 12 Nov. 1420, when her first husband attested the Lincoln parlty. election, and Nov. 1421: C219/12/4; Lincs. AO, Lincoln city recs., White bk. L1/3/1, f. 3. Feriby already had connexions in the city and he now came to play a more significant role in its affairs. On 20 Oct. 1422 he attested the city’s parliamentary election; in the following month the Crown commissioned him to inquire into wastes in a hospital just outside the city; and he himself was returned for the city at its next election on 14 Sept. 1423. Later, when, in 1426, he joined the wealthy Nottinghamshire esquire Ralph Makerell* in suing the Lincoln merchant Henry Tamworth I* for a debt of as much as £120, he described himself as a citizen of Lincoln. C219/13/1, 2; CPR, 1422-9, p. 37; CP40/660, rot. 262.

Feriby’s new city interests did not, however, lead him to abandon his part in the wider affairs of the county. A fortnight after his election to the 1423 Parliament he was in technical breach of the electoral statutes by attesting the county return. He again appeared as a mainpernor in Chancery in January 1425 on the appointment of Robert Hilliard to the Lincolnshire shrievalty, and his legal qualifications gained further recognition in the following March when he was promoted to the quorum of the Lindsey bench. Soon after, he recurs in his familiar role as an attestor of elections, being present at both the county election of 26 Mar. and the city election of 2 Apr., again in technical breach of statute. He also attested the following county election of 14 Jan. 1426 and acted as one of the pledges of Hamon Sutton I* on his return to represent Lincoln a week later. CFR, xv. 96; C66/416, m. 14d; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. i. 71-72; C219/13/2-4.

When added to his own lands and earnings as a lawyer, the inheritance of Feriby’s second wife made him a man of some wealth. In the subsidy return of 1436, described as ‘of Frodingham’, he was assessed on an income of £20 p.a. E179/136/198. Yet by this date his career had already begun to fade. He had remained active on local commissions until the early 1430s, most notably when he sat as a Lindsey subsidy assessor in January 1432, but he was removed from the bench in the following July. He attested the last of his six county elections in June 1433 and was appointed to his final commission two years later. Feudal Aids. iii. 354, 358; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. i. 73; CPR, 1429-36, p. 620. It is not clear why he was appointed to a gaol delivery commission for Reading in 1435: C66/437, m. 8d. He last appears in the records in November 1443, when, as one of the feoffees of one of the leading men of his native county, Sir Thomas Cumberworth*, he sued out a royal licence to alienate in mortmain. He was dead by Trinity term 1446, when his widow had already taken as her third husband one Thomas Scott. CPR, 1441-6, p. 227; CP40/742, rot. 26d.

As a lawyer Feriby was very active in the affairs of his neighbours. Besides Cumberworth, for whom he was a feoffee from the autumn of 1429, he acted in the same capacity for his fellow Lindsey landholders, Sir Thomas Beelsby of Beelsby, Patrick Skipwith*, John Haytefeld of Flixborough, and Thomas Mitford of Luddington. On 3 July 1423, along with other Lindsey landholders, he witnessed a charter, oddly dated at London, relating to the Strange of Knockin manor at West Halton. CP40/679, cart. rot. 2; CCR, 1413-19, p. 426; 1422-9, p. 72; 1435-41, p. 241; CP25(1)/145/158/18, 22-23, 25; 292/68/178. He also maintained an association with the dean and chapter of Lincoln cathedral. By 1420 he was in receipt of an annual fee of one mark for his legal counsel from them; and from at least 1420 until 1434 he acted as their steward at Navenby, a few miles outside the city. Ramsay, app. 9, p. lxxxvii.