LIGHTFOOT, William (d.1459), of Salisbury, Wilts.

Lightfoot’s will makes it clear that he came from an Essex family, and held lands and tenements in that county, which he left to his brother John. PCC 17 Stokton. The precise location of these particular holdings is uncertain, although the Lightfoots did have property in Barking and Dagenham, and Humphrey Lightfoot, a ‘gentleman’ of Roxwell, was assessed on an income from land worth £6 p.a. for the tax of 1436. C1/40/103; E179/240/267, m. 1; CPR, 1416-22, p. 287; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 433, 442. An earlier John Lightfoot had been in the service of the de Bohuns, most notably Joan, countess of Hereford, and her daughter Eleanor, the duchess of Gloucester, although his relationship to William is not recorded. CFR, xiii. 176; CPR, 1416-22, pp. 105-6. After our MP’s death there were Lightfoots living at Great Dunmow in the 1460s and 1470s. CCR, 1468-76, nos. 478, 544.

William moved away from his home county to settle in Salisbury, where he was living and well established among the citizens by 1440, thereafter prospering through his trading ventures. In his commercial dealings, as in many other matters, he was often associated with William Swayn*, another prominent merchant of the city. The two men imported goods into Southampton, and had them carted to Salisbury for sale. In Lightfoot’s case he dealt in quantities of foodstuffs from the Mediterranean – dates, rice, fruit, raisins, almonds, sugar, oil and wine – but in addition he traded in alum, wax, white and black soap and ‘spendynge paper’, Brokage Bk. 1443-4, i and ii (Soton Rec. Ser. iv, vi), passim. and profited from bringing to Salisbury woad and madder for the processes of finishing cloth. Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (Soton Rec. Ser. xxxvi), passim. The provenance of some of his merchandise might be subject to inquiry. It was said in December 1445 that four butts of malmsey then in his possession had been part of a cargo taken from a Venetian carrack by Spanish pirates, who had re-shipped it in a Genoese vessel which was eventually unloaded at Southampton. Lightfoot, perhaps ignorant of the wine’s history, had purchased it from the Genoese. CPR, 1441-6, p. 463. More of his concerns are revealed in a petition he directed to the Commons of 1453, requesting the Crown to take action against various individuals involved in the illegal seizure of a ship containing his goods. The Breton vessel he had hired to transport his merchandise to England had been attacked at sea and taken to Fowey, where its cargo was stolen and distributed among the captors. He requested that the sheriff of Cornwall be ordered to summon the miscreants before the chancellor to hear his case, in pursuance of a statute of Edward III allowing him recovery of goods stolen at sea. The petition, sent to the Lords, was granted by the King, with the result that a royal commission to investigate was issued on 16 June. SC8/121/6015; cf. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 118-19 (complaints from others regarding the same event).

Lightfoot, taking an active role in the affairs of Salisbury, supported the authorities in their dealings with the central government. As one of the wealthier citizens, he was assessed to contribute to the city’s loans to the Crown, his usual share being a mark or £1 in the 1440s and 1450s, rising to £1 6s. 8d. in 1454. First General Entry Bk. 360C, 368B, 391, 431; ledger bk. 2, G23/1/2, ff. 3v, 10. A regular participant at meetings of the convocation from April 1443 to July 1459, First General Entry Bk. 381, and passim to 457; ledger bk. 2, G23/1/2, passim, to f. 37. he progressed from the council of 48 to the higher ranks of the 24 on 2 Nov. 1444, then being sworn to that body and paying a fine of £4 to be excused from the offices of alderman and reeve. William Swayn and William Warwick* stood pledge for him. First General Entry Bk. 394; Wilts. Hist. Centre, Salisbury acct. rolls, G23/1/44, no. 1. On a later occasion, in December 1446, he was required to provide two pounds of wax for failing to attend an assembly when given notice to do so, but this absence was unusual. First General Entry Bk. 407. Lightfoot took on various duties on behalf of the city: in September 1445 he was an assessor of parliamentary subsidies, and in the same year he was paid 20s. for his labour and expenses in going to the Exchequer to obtain a tally for repayment of a loan of £40 made to the King. Ibid. 399; Salisbury acct. rolls, G23/1/44, nos. 1, 2. In 1449-50 on the mayor’s instructions he took responsibility for giving £1 to one of the yeomen of the Crown. Lightfoot was chosen by Swayn to be an arbiter in his dispute with the grocer Richard Balteswell, who swore to observe his award on 11 Nov. 1451 (by which date Lightfoot was mayor), and Balteswell was bound over to behave properly towards him and his fellows. First General Entry Bk. 446.

Lightfoot’s mayoralty proved eventful. On 28 Apr. 1452 a convocation was called in the presence of the city’s lord, Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury, then exerting his authority in the face of the citizens’ increasing demands for liberties; and in August the city had rapidly to find 20 soldiers to serve overseas in the earl of Shrewsbury’s army, a demand which meant that money had to be initially taken from the common chest, which was to be replenished with contributions from individual citizens. At the settlement of his accounts on 27 Oct. Lightfoot was found to owe the community £4 16s., which he duly paid. Ibid. 448, 452, 454, 455. During his mayoralty, he had taken out a royal pardon, on 7 Sept. C67/40, m. 20. The following year he was among those chosen to supervise the assessment of goods and chattels for payment of a parliamentary subsidy. Ledger bk. 2, G23/1/2, f. 4v.

Lightfoot was well regarded by his fellows. Together with William Swayn he was named as an executor of the will of John White, another merchant of Salisbury. As such they were the subjects of a petition to the chancellor in which Thomas Goldsmith of Shaftesbury alleged that they had wrongfully arrested him at Salisbury and forced him to enter a bond in £16, by colour of which he had been imprisoned at Winchester. Part of Goldsmith’s account seems to have had some validity, for the two of them did indeed take a bond from the petitioner (albeit in £15) in October 1440, and subsequently sued out a writ for Goldsmith’s arrest for failing to pay. As White’s executors Lightfoot and Swayn also brought suits in the court of common pleas against his debtors. C1/11/375; C241/230/59; CP40/721, rots. 173, 235d; 724, rots. 169d, 170, 367d. In addition, our MP took on the executorship of the will of William Halstede of Salisbury, who in July 1450 left him and his co-executor Richard Walker the residue of his moveable goods. But Halstede’s daughter-in-law Ellen (the widow of the testator’s son John) and her new husband John William* of Southampton sued an action of trespass before the mayor and bailiffs of Southampton against Walker, for taking away certain of these goods, asserting that they should have passed to Ellen by virtue of a deed. Although this deed was found to have been forged by John Halstede, Walker was condemned in his absence in £130, and arrested and imprisoned. The fact that Lightfoot did not join his co-executor in petitioning the chancellor about the wrong done to him suggests that the clash with the Williams did not occur until after his death. Wilts. Hist. Centre, Trin. Hosp. Salisbury mss, 1446/66; Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, ii. pp. xxx-xxxi (C1/2/41).

Lightfoot had stood as a mainpernor for Thomas Freeman* on his election for Salisbury to the Parliament of 1450, and he formally attested the indentures drawn up at Wilton recording the knights of the shire in that Parliament and the next assembly of 1453. At home he took part in the elections held in Salisbury’s convocation prior to both the Parliaments of 1449 and that of 1453, and was also present on the occasion that he himself was chosen to represent the city in 1455. C219/16/1; First General Entry Bk. 425, 434; ledger bk. 2, G23/1/2, ff. 4, 12. The Commons met for three sessions. Shortly before the start of the second, in November, Lightfoot was named at Salisbury as one of the arbiters in the acrimonious disputes between his friend William Swayn, the mayor, and Edmund Penston*, a fellow member of the council of 24, and between Swayn and Richard Hayne II*, another one of their number. Ledger bk. 2, G23/1/2, f. 13v. The Parliament ended on 12 Mar. 1456. In July he was placed on a local committee to supervise repairs to communally-held property, and a year later he joined the body responsible for the maintenance of Georges Inn. In September 1457 he was the recipient with Swayn and the mayor John Hall II* of letters patent authorizing them to raise money in the city for the defence of the realm. Ibid. ff. 19, 27v, 28. This serves to confirm Lightfoot’s position among the most important of Salisbury’s citizens. He was an auditor of the city accounts in October, and in June 1458 once more took on the task of assessing dues in the aldermanry of New Street. Most important, on 27 June 1459, when it was hoped that a formal concord could be made between the city and the bishop of Salisbury to end their disagreements, he was one of the four men who accompanied the mayor to London for negotiations. A little over two weeks later it was decided that he and five others from the 24 and seven from the 48 should be empowered to examine the evidences regarding the status of the mayor and commonalty, so that the authorities would be fully informed about the background to the disputes while conducting their case to be freed from the bishop’s jurisdiction. Ibid. ff. 29v, 33v, 36v, 37.

By the 1450s Lightfoot had become a man of property. In February 1451 he was assessed for taxation in Wiltshire on lands worth £10 p.a., E179/196/118. and among his several holdings in Salisbury, as listed in 1455, were a tenement in St. Martin’s Street, another called ‘Le Cheker’ in Endless Street, ‘Le Faucon’ by the lower bridge of Fisherton Anger, ‘Le Hyde’ in Winchester Street, and a curtilege, garden and racks for drying cloth. Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 70. Besides these his will, made on 22 Sept. 1459, referred to shops, a tenement called ‘Le Ster’ and buildings in Carcerne Street. Outside the city he held property in Wilton, and land in the neighbouring county of Hampshire at Amport, Stockbridge and Leckford. How he had acquired all these is not explained, although some of the Salisbury property had been purchased from John Wylly. In the will he left all his holdings to his widow Edith for life, then to be divided up between his four sons. One of his daughters, Joan, wife of William Cammell (probably of the Dorset family), was to have the Wilton property in tail, with remainder to her sister Katherine, and also to have the £10 which her father-in-law owed him. Lightfoot’s other children were each to receive £20 when they came of age; meanwhile, they were placed under Edith’s guardianship. Lightfoot asked to be buried in St. Mary’s chapel in the church of St. Thomas the Martyr in Salisbury, which was to receive his new missal after Edith’s death, and he left sums amounting to over £6 to this church and other local religious establishments including the leper house at Harnham and the Trinity almshouse, while property in Fisherton was left in remainder to the hospital of St. Nicholas. A chaplain was to be paid to pray for his soul for six years. Bequests consisting mainly of lengths of cloth and lavish robes (each described in detail), were bequeathed to kinsmen and friends, including members of the family of Bukbridge, whose head, Roger, a brasier, was to be Edith’s co-executor. Lightfoot’s friend William Swayn was named as a supervisor in association with John Wheeler, another former mayor, each of them receiving a bequest of a silver crater. Probate was granted on 4 Oct. PCC 17 Stokton.

Lightfoot’s executors pursued his debtors over the next few years. There were those who had defaulted on terms agreed under the Salisbury statute merchant, for example a Hampshire merchant bound to Lightfoot in £40, a gentleman from Devizes for £24, and a chapman of Chippenham for £8 16s. 8d.; writs were issued for their arrest. C241/246/73, 74; 248/20; 249/53. However, the executors were themselves the subject of an action brought in the court of common pleas in Hilary term 1461 by the lawyer John Whittocksmead*, claiming unlawful detinue of £60, on a bond Lightfoot had entered just before his death. CP40/800, rot. 197.