MARCHE, William (d.1444), of Southampton.

Not to be confused with the William March or Mareys who became an important retainer of Cardinal Beaufort, Beaufort’s retainer was appointed to serve as collector of customs at Southampton on the cardinal’s nomination from 6 Nov. 1442 to 31 Dec. 1446. Sometimes called ‘of Hampshire, esquire’, he had been in Beaufort’s service since 1429 or earlier, notably in the administration of his estates at Havant, and was to be made an executor of his will. He later lived at Faversham in Kent and died in 1458 or 1459: C67/39 m.4; 42 m.20; Hants RO, bp. of Winchester’s pipe roll, 11M59/B1/173 (formerly 159429); Reg. Common Seal (Hants Rec. Ser. ii), no. 228; PCC 18 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 134). the MP was a merchant residing and trading in Southampton. There is no positive evidence that he was related to Thomas atte Marche, elected for the borough long before in 1339, but it is possible that Adam Marche or Marsh (d.c.1439), whose second bailiffship of Southampton, in 1435-6, followed immediately after his own, was a kinsman. C. Platt, Med. Southampton, 249-50. In his youth William lived a few miles from the port, at Hambledon, and in 1419 he acquired property nearby at Flexland in Soberton. He still possessed land at Hambledon 22 years later, when he and his wife, Joan, granted some of it out on a 101-year lease for an annual rent of just 6s. 8d. Winchester Coll. muns. 10146, 10406. Marche and his wife, who also came from Hambledon, owned a messuage and some 450 acres of land there and at Boarhunt, which apparently comprised Joan’s inheritance from her brother. C1/20/26-29. In 1436 Marche’s landed possessions in Hampshire were assessed for the purpose of taxation at £7 p.a., E179/173/92. although this might not have taken account of the property in Southampton which his wife held as dower from her previous marriage to another merchant, William Ledys.

After his marriage Marche brought several actions for debt in the court of common pleas to recover sums of money owed to Ledys’s estate, of which his wife was an executor. In 1433 the couple sued seven different debtors from Newbury, Reading and elsewhere, for sums amounting to over £23. CP40/691, rots. 295, 577. Marche’s principal holdings in Southampton – a block of nine tenements or messuages situated at the ‘New Corner’ on the west side of English Street, with a great vault beneath them – were next to a house which Joan held as dower from Ledys, and he also possessed three tenements in the suburb. Southampton Terrier 1454 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xv), nos. 200-8; Soton. recs. SC4/2/277, 277a. Some of this property may have been purchased with the profits of trade. Marche began trading through the port of Southampton in the early 1430s, building up a business exporting cloth and importing wine, almonds and onions, which he often sent by cart to Winchester to sell in the markets there. He had commercial dealings with foreign merchants visiting Southampton, from whom he bought iron. Yet the chief commodity he dealt in appears to have been fish. In 1439-40 he dispatched three wains of stockfish and at least 50 cades of herring from Southampton to Winchester, Salisbury and Andover, as well as trading in salmon and saltfish; and he stood pledge for the payment of tolls on several cargoes of fish unloaded on the quayside by merchants who were not themselves burgesses of Southampton. Port Bk. 1435-6 (Soton. Rec. Ser. vii), 20; 1439-40 (ibid. v), 21-22, 29, 35, 37; Brokage Bk. 1439-40 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1941), 26, 70, 73, 75, 79, 90, 91, 94, 99, 107, 108, 111, 113, 129; E122/209/1 ff. 10v, 83; 141/23, f. 14v, pt. 2, f. 10; E101/128/31, m. 8.

Marche first became involved in the public administration of Southampton in the year before his bailiffship, when he and Peter James* received £3 from the town’s steward for various items of expenditure to do with a lawsuit in which the authorities were currently engaged, and during his time as bailiff he transferred 53s. 4d. to Winchester as a payment to the justices sitting at the assizes. Stewards’ Bks. 1428-34 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1935), 86, 94. Evidently he carried out his duties as one of Southampton’s representatives in the Parliament of January-March 1437 to his fellow burgesses’ satisfaction, for just a few months later he was elected mayor, and at the close of his term chosen to be alderman. Marche is not recorded alive after January 1444, and died before Michaelmas term 1445, by which date his widow and executrix had married Nicholas Holmehegge*. Together with her new husband Joan brought a number of actions for debt in the common pleas to recover sums of money owing to Marche’s estate. The lawsuits show that the MP had had commercial dealings with tradesmen from Wells and Yeovil in Somerset, as well as others from nearer home at Fordingbridge. As much as £91 11s. was still outstanding, a sum which provides some indication of the scale of his trading concerns. CP40/739, rot. 492d. In December 1445 it was formally confirmed that the widow should keep her and her late husband’s extensive properties in Southampton for term of her life, with successive remainders in tail to their son John Marche, and to any issue Joan might have by Holmehegge. Soton. recs. SC4/2/277, 277a. This effectively denied the rights of Marche’s daughter, Agnes, who married William Benstede, although it transpires from the evidence of petitions presented in Chancery several years later that the MP had intended her to inherit his land at Hambledon. C1/20/26-29; 33/302. The petitions possibly date from 1465-7. John Marche, still a minor, did not long survive his father: he died in 1450 while still at school at Winchester College, Winchester Coll. muns., list of commoners comp. Leach, 33. but his mother out-lived him, not dying until the early 1460s.