FURBY, John, of Shoreham, Suss.

John came from a Sussex family, and was probably related to William Furby, who had been a mainpernor and attorney for Robert, Lord Poynings, one of the county’s leading magnates, in the early years of the century. CCR, 1405-9, pp. 269, 512; Add. Ch. 30227. He himself was living in Shoreham by the time of his first return to Parliament for the borough, and in the following year he was among the ‘honest and lawful’ men of the town asked by the royal searcher to appraise a cargo of smuggled wool discovered in local waters. E122/184/7. Furby made several attempts to establish himself as a landowner, but often met with obstacles. For instance, in December 1439 he petitioned the chancellor with regard to his failed purchase of property from one William Malling, whose late father’s feoffees had allegedly neglected to carry out his instructions. Among his pledges were two Sussex lawyers, Thomas Chaloner* and Robert Wodefold*, C1/39/99-100. and it may be speculated that he too was a member of the legal profession, although there is no sign that he was active as an attorney in the central courts. His connexion with Wodefold was a close one, for he subsequently acted as a trustee of his family’s holdings in Lewes. CAD, i. C493. Furby was of sufficient status to attest the Sussex elections held in the shire court at Chichester on 11 Jan. 1442. C219/15/2. Ten years later he served as a feoffee for another lawyer, William Thwaites*, and as executor for a fourth, William Fenningham* (a fellow Member of the Commons of 1435). Furby was also acquainted with Bartholomew Bolney*, one of the most prominent legal practitioners in the county. CP25(1)/241/90/20; KB27/768, rot. 13; Bolney Bk. (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxiii), 76.

During the 1450s Furby was engaged in an acrimonious dispute with members of the family of Bust, concerning ownership of a messuage and some 200 acres of land in Ringmer and Cliffe near Lewes. In Michaelmas term 1453 he appeared in person in the King’s bench to plead a bill against William Bust, then in the custody of the marshal, alleging that he had taken 62 of his cattle at Ringmer, and claiming damages of 40 marks. Bust retaliated with charges of his own, and as Furby was asserted to be ‘a man disposed to breke the pease’, who ‘dailly troubleth and debateth with his neighbours and with force of armes’ he was required to provide sureties for his good behaviour. Nevertheless, as Bust demonstrated in November 1455 in a petition addressed to the chancellor, Archbishop Bourgchier (who had a personal interest in the matter as lord of the land in question), the men Furby produced as his sureties were not worth 20s. p.a., let alone the £20 they were bound in, and so when Furby entered the disputed property Bust could not take action against them. Furby replied that at the time the bonds were sealed his mainpernors had been sufficient, and that his opponent was acting purely out of malice and for vengeance. Eventually both parties were bound in £40 to submit to arbitration. It would seem that both had a valid claim to the property, for although under the terms of the award made by Richard Jay* and other arbitrators on 21 Apr. 1458 Furby had to relinquish his title to the estate he was nevertheless to be compensated with the sum of £24 and an annual rent of £6 for life. KB27/774, rot. 66; C1/25/104; Cat. Glynde Place Archs. ed. Dell, 150.

By this date Furby had moved away from the Sussex coast. In a pardon granted him on 25 Nov. that same year he was called ‘of Ifield, gentleman’. C67/42, m. 2. His attempts to acquire more land continued despite further setbacks. In the early 1460s he petitioned the chancellor with regard to another failed purchase, this time of the manor of Worth in Little Horsted, which belonged to Thomas, son and heir of Roger Honyton†. Towards the end of 1461 he had agreed to pay 100 marks by instalments, and handed part of this sum to Honyton’s wife, Margaret, but was unable to take possession of the manor after her husband denied giving her permission to complete the sale. The situation was complicated by the claims of Robert Delve that the Honytons had previously contracted to sell Worth to his late father, who had paid them half the asking price of 160 marks. Witnesses were examined in Sussex in the summer of 1463, but how the matter was resolved is uncertain, and Furby is not recorded thereafter. Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, ii. pp. xl-xli; C1/2/58-62; 28/63-73.