MELLE, William atte, of Reigate and Lingfield, Surr.

Atte Melle is to be distinguished from a namesake, the London jeweller who also married a woman named Agnes but who was dead before 1414. He owned property at Lingfield, close to the borough he was to represent in Parliament, and in the summer of 1401 he and his wife conveyed a messuage, ten acres of land and 3s. of rent there to Henry Halsted. CP25(1)/231/66/7. Yet he was called ‘of Reigate’ in suits brought against him in the common pleas in the 1430s. The suits, one of which was instigated by Richard Combe*, who had sat for Guildford in the same Parliament of 1423, were for debts of relatively small sums of money. The plea rolls note that atte Melle was a baker, and that he was also known by the alias of Baker. CP40/699, rot. 270; 708, rot. 29d. Even so, it is unlikely that he was the same man as William Baker*, who was to sit for Reigate several years later, in 1459. Atte Melle may have lived on until June 1441 when a man of this name witnessed a gift of goods and chattels in Surrey. CCR, 1435-41, p. 478.