HIPPERON, John

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 381.

Although no conclusive evidence of Hipperon’s origins has been discovered, it is possible that he was related to a family from western Yorkshire that took its name from the hamlet of Hipperholme in Calderdale. Even if so, Hipperon must be distinguished from several contemporary namesakes, including a York glover who was alive in 1437 and a Yorkshireman (probably the man who was John of Gaunt’s parker at Pontefract in the 1380s) whose wife, Emma, was buried at Pontefract in 1398: CPR, 1436-41, p. 105; Thoresby Soc. xxvi(pt. 2), 197; Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xii. 48; CP25(1)/279/149/40, 280/155/11. It was the glover, rather than the MP, who was married to a wife called Katherine: SC1/57/97; CPR, 1436-41, p. 333.

There is rather more evidence for Hipperon’s activities as an attorney in the courts of common pleas and King’s bench for plaintiffs from Surrey and Sussex in the 1420s and early 1430s. In 1420 he acted as an attorney for the London grocer Thomas Knolles†. CP40/638, rot. 52. While his second Parliament was in progress in the Michaelmas term of 1422 he appeared in court on behalf of the abbots of Chertsey and Battle, and in later years he acted regularly not only for these two but also for the prior of Hastings. CP40/643, rot. 356; 647, rots. 25, 168d; 650, rot. 339; 651, rot. 159d; 657, rots. 147d, 169; 658, rot. 168; 661, rots. 92d, 249; 671, rot. 328d; 680, rot. 186d; 686, rots. 76, 302; 691, rot. 575. A year later, he served as attorney for Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, and Thomas Clere of Southwark in a suit against a Dartmouth mariner, CP40/651, rot. 501. and that same autumn he was also an executor of the parson of the church of St. Nicholas in Guildford. CP40/651, rot. 455. Also in 1423ear he quarrelled with a ‘gentlewoman’ from Guildford, Margery Knolles, who was said to have taken some of his goods from Artington. CP40/651, rots. 477, 478. In 1424 he was employed by Nicholas Carew* of Beddington in a dispute with his tailor, CP40/654, rot. 303. and by Joan Catton and Agnes Bassett, the sisters and coheirs of Thomas Wintershall (d.1420), who were endeavouring to recover the manor of Polsted in Surrey from John Loxley; while another member of the gentry for whom he acted later was William Uvedale I*. The pardon which he took out in June 1437 referred to his place of residence as Rothwell in Guildford, and to his role as an executor of John Clipsham*, who had himself been an executor of the former treasurer of England, William Kynwolmarsh. Presumably, Hipperon had been required to complete the administration of the latter’s estate after Clipsham’s death. By February 1446 he appears to have moved to North Lambeth, close to the Thames, where he acted as one of the feoffees-to-use of property belonging to Henry and Margaret Wroughton. In November 1447, described as of North Lambeth, he made a gift of his goods and chattels to a number of Surrey men including John Basket*, Geoffrey Godelok* and William Rous*. CP40/652, rot. 489; 655, rot. 123; 662, rot. 133d; 680, rots. 47, 47d; KB27/651, rots. 88d, att. rot. 1; C67/38, m. 19; CCR, 1441-7, p. 368; 1447-54, p. 25; CP25(1)/179/93.