More may be added to the earlier biography.
James’s association with Thomas Chaucer* brought him into contact with Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, the second husband of Chaucer’s daughter and heir Alice. Salisbury died on military service in France in 1428, but parts of his will were still in dispute several years later. In late 1432 or 1433, the earl’s ‘cousin’, William Montagu*, tried to claim a lordship in Lambourn, Berkshire, which, he asserted, the earl had bought from the late MP. In reality, Salisbury had inherited it from his father, meaning that James’s interest in it can only ever have been that of a feoffee.