MITCHELL, John I

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 741-2.

Mitchell’s trading activities as a fishmonger probably provide the background to charges respectively brought before the justices of common pleas in Hilary term 1426 by Thomas Salman and in Easter term 1427 by the earl of Arundel’s representatives, John Burgh†, William Ryman*, Walter Urry*, Thomas Hayton, Richard Wakehurst† , John Payn and William Okehurst*, that a group of men clearly thought to have been acting on Mitchell’s behalf had stolen large quantities of fish from their private fisheries at Imworth and Thames Ditton in Surrey and – presumably in the course of this illicit activity – had blocked the watercourse to their respective mills at Imworth and Esher. CP40/660, rot. 134; 665, rot. 124.

As well as being a wealthy heiress in her own right, Mitchell’s third wife was also the widow of a Buckinghamshire man named Nicholas Wolbergh. Some of her dower lands at Nutfield in Surrey were held from one of the leading landowners in the home counties, Nicholas Carew† of Beddington, with whom the Mitchells came into conflict in 1427 over the livestock he had seized in distraint for unpaid rents. CP40/667, rot. 327d. It is likely that Wolbergh was a relative of a London fishmonger, John Wolbergh, for whom Mitchell acted as a feoffee of property in the city. Margaret’s daughter and heiress from that marriage, Cecily, subsequently married the Sussex lawyer William Sydney*, who was appointed as one of Mitchell’s executors in 1445. As well as Wolbergh’s property, Sydney doubtless hoped to gain possession of some of his mother-in-law’s own holdings in Hertfordshire and Surrey. In the event, however, she outlived both her daughter and son-in-law and died in 1455. C1/5/150, 69/29; VCH Bucks. iv. 449; C139/46/42; CP40/667, rot. 327d.

By his later years, Mitchell had acquired substantial landholdings in the home counties and beyond. In 1436 his holdings in Surrey, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire were valued at some £50 p.a. E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14. It was a namesake, a London mercer, who held property in Mdx. and Bucks. worth £12 p.a. There was also a second and less distinguished London grocer of this name, a younger man who survived into the 1480s: C147/142. These were the lands which eventually passed into the hands of John Wood III*, the third husband of Mitchell’s elder daughter Elizabeth (previously the wife of William Fitzharry and the royal surgeon Thomas Morstead). Corp. London RO, hr 160/26; J.S. Roskell, Speakers, 291.