MORFOTE, William, of Winchelsea and Pevensey, Suss.

This renowned sea-captain and notorious privateer first appears in the records in 1410. As William Morfote ‘junior’ and already a Portsman of Winchelsea, he claimed exemption from parliamentary taxation on his moveable goods at Guestling, outside the Port, and subsequently did likewise regarding his possessions at Udimore. E179/225/34a, 50; 226/71; 228/118. Morfote’s marriage to the widow of John French, a former mayor of Winchelsea, brought him land concentrated on the parish of Westham near Pevensey, several miles to the west. At the end of 1420 French’s feoffees and son John conveyed holdings in the liberty of Pevensey to Alice Morfote, and further transactions regarding her dower in her late husband’s property were completed in the following year. Morfote later took advantage of his stepson’s financial difficulties: in 1433 French relinquished to the MP his reversionary interest not only in his parents’ lands but also any title he had to those of his maternal grandfather, thus putting Morfote in possession of the French and Bacon inheritances. Battle Abbey mss, deeds 686, 971, 1388, 1417, 1494.

It is likely that Morfote became a jurat of Winchelsea before his earliest election to Parliament, but no local records survive to confirm this supposition. Still called ‘junior’, in January 1415 he served on the jury which reported on a thorough survey of Winchelsea, undertaken so that the town might be properly fortified with walls built on a shorter perimeter than at present, so that it could be a ‘frontier of the King’s enemies’ – a project for which Henry V was prepared to grant 600 marks. Cat. Rye Recs. ed. Dell, 272; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 766. The inq. (without naming the jurors) is calendared in CIMisc. vii. 503. Morfote’s returns as a baron to the Parliaments of 1423 and 1429 attest to his standing in the Port, and to the regard in which he was held by his fellow Portsmen. He was named among the witnesses to an endowment of St. Nicholas’ chantry in the parish church at Winchelsea made in December 1430 by William Skele†, who was a trustee of his lands and someone on whom he felt able to call in times of trouble. Cott. Julius BIV, ff. 40v, 42. Morfote certainly served as a jurat for two years from Easter 1431, as chosen by the mayor John Godfrey*, and it was during this term of office that he was returned to the Parliament which assembled at Westminster from May to July 1432. As one of the two wardens of the new town walls he was party to the implementation of the testamentary arrangements made long before by John Salerne† (d.1410), which were finally completed in November that same year. Ibid. ff. 42-43v, 46-50.

While his public service in the locality and for his home town in Parliament provides a veneer of respectability to Morfote’s career, at its core were seafaring activities of dubious legality. In November 1421 the King’s Council had looked into a suit pending against him in the law courts at Westminster. The case, of which few details survive, concerned ownership of a vessel: a man called Conrad swore on oath that Morfote was not the ship’s owner, stating that this was one Antonius Castoigner. That Morfote nominated Thomas Haseley† to be his attorney in the plaint is an indication of its serious nature, for Haseley was secondary clerk in Chancery, and could boast influential contacts. PPC, ii. 306; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 307-10. Little is known about Morefote’s mercantile activities, although they did involve interests in the wine trade. In the summer of 1425 he was summoned to the Exchequer to make answer regarding a shipment of four tuns of red wine which according to William Catton†, the former collector of customs along the Sussex coast, he had shipped into Winchelsea from Normandy in April 1420, landed without licence of the customers and sold without payment of tunnage. The cargo had been duly confiscated. Through his attorney, Morfote pointed out that the act of the Parliament of 1415 whereby the King had been granted tunnage at the rate of 3s. on the tun, had stipulated that the merchants should be treated honestly and their testimony accepted; if concealed merchandise should be found they should pay double the subsidy on anything on which duty had not been paid, without suffering any forfeiture. After the record was inspected at his request, Morfote was duly charged 24s., and the matter was dropped. E159/201, recorda Trin. rot. 6; PROME, ix. 118. More serious charges followed. In May 1426 a commission was directed to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, as constable of Dover and warden of the Cinque Ports, together with such leading landowners in east Sussex as Sir John Pelham* and Sir Roger Fiennes*, to make inquiries regarding a complaint presented to the King by certain of his Flemish subjects. This was to the effect that Morfote had lately taken and robbed on the high seas two ships from Sluys, which he had brought into Winchelsea. The duke and the rest were to ensure that restitution was made of the cargoes or their value, and the crews released from custody. CPR, 1422-9, p. 359. Four years later, on 28 May 1430, not long after the dissolution of Morfote’s second Parliament, another commission was sent to Gloucester, and also to the mayor and bailiffs of Winchelsea, to arrest him and bring him before the Council. His goods were to be confiscated. Morfote’s alleged offence this time was that he had taken at sea a shipment of wine from La Rochelle, belonging to certain merchants of Picardy deemed to be loyal to the English Crown. The order had to be repeated three weeks later, when it was stated that Morfote should be brought to Westminster ‘with all speed’. CPR, 1429-36, pp. 73, 75. The outcome is not recorded.

Whatever Morfote’s offences, the services of sea captains of his kind were nevertheless essential to the Crown for the conduct of the war in France. On 17 Mar. following (1431), he took out letters of protection as going to Normandy in the retinue of Edmund Beaufort, earl of Mortain, presumably to assist in the transport and victualling of his forces. DKR, xlviii. 281. Before they embarked there was other business to be settled. Three days later Morfote entered recognizances in £250 with the earl’s uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, as a guarantee that he would abide by the cardinal’s award regarding all legal actions between him and Sir John ‘the bastard of Clarence’ and Sir John Keighley. In this he was supported by four Londoners, who provided financial backing. The suit concerned another shipment of wine from La Rochelle, dispatched on the Seint Nova de Plemmerque, which was taken at sea by the bastard and Keighly and then sent by them to Winchelsea ‘en governence de Morfote’. CCR, 1429-35, p. 118; C1/69/316. He and Keighley were still at odds in 1433, when Sir John informed the King that Morfote owed the Crown 105 marks as its share of three barges taken at sea: E159/209, brevia Trin. rot. 4. The letters of protection may have been acquired with the intention of evading other prosecutions in the courts.

The background to the trouble which arose at home in Winchelsea two years later, culminating in a quarrel between Morfote and William Worth*, one of his fellow jurats and his companion in his first Parliament, remains obscure, but was clearly related to the election of Winchelsea’s mayor, customarily held at Easter but on this occasion delayed for two months owing to the general discord. Morfote was required to provide sureties of the peace on 31 May 1433, three men including William Skele each being bound in 100 marks on his behalf, and it is worthy of note that although the new mayor, William Fynch*, removed him from the body of jurats he nominated a few days later, he asked Morfote’s opponent Worth to continue serving in this capacity. Cott. Julius BIV, ff. 42, 51v. Nor was Morfote to be selected as a jurat again until several years had elapsed. This may be put down to the legal proceedings against him. In June 1434 the authorities at Winchelsea were ordered by Duke Humphrey to send him the record of the process against Morfote for breach of the peace, and in April of the following year instructed to seize and value Morfote’s goods and chattels in the liberty of the Port, including his barge called Le Marie, to levy the sum of £73 awarded to John Harowe* the London mercer by judgement of the admiralty court at Dover. On 24 July 1435 Gloucester sent another mandate, demanding that this money should be raised at Winchelsea within a week and delivered at the sea-shore at Dover on 3 Aug., on pain of a fine of £100. The duke required information about Le Marie and its cargo, which had been dispatched to Bordeaux. The men of Winchelsea viewed these pre-emptory demands as a threat to the charters and liberties of the Cinque Ports, and Thomas Long* of Rye came forward to claim all the confiscated goods and chattels as his own, as he and others had them by Morfote’s gift, thus enabling the authorities to respond to Gloucester that Morfote in fact owned nothing whatsoever in their liberty. Ibid. ff. 59-60v.

At this stage, Morfote thought it prudent to purchase further letters of protection from the Crown, ostensibly as going overseas in the retinue of Richard Pemberton. DKR, xlviii. 305. Nevertheless, the duke eventually caught up with him and he was kept a prisoner in Dover castle for ‘long tyme’, until he managed to escape ‘as wele as he myght, for grete feer of more duresse of prisonment’. According to his petition, supported by the Commons of the Parliament assembled from 10 Oct. to 23 Dec. 1435, he was then at sea, doing service to the King ‘as a trewe liege man owyth to don’, with 100 men under his command, arrayed to fight the King’s enemies and defend the realm, all at his own cost, but was unable to victual his ship as ‘his vitaill is forboden him in diverse place in this londe’; indeed, he dared not disembark until he received a royal pardon. The favourable response of King and Lords was that ‘an esy fyn’ should be made with Gloucester, for Morfote’s offence of breaking out of prison, and that he was not to be molested or impeached for this. However, any person with a lawful action against him was permitted to pursue it. PROME, xi. 180-1. That winter Morfote received further letters of protection, this time as a member of the retinue of the earl of Suffolk, and in the summer of 1437 he served under Lord Willoughby. His ship, Le Marie, was requisitioned for the parliamentary force for the keeping of the seas in 1442. DKR, xlviii. 308, 318; PROME, xi. 373-4.

Thereafter, Morfote’s appearances in the records, for instance as a minor official at Pevensey in the 1440s and in the court rolls of the rape of Hastings, reveal nothing to his detriment. Ct. Rolls Rape of Hastings (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxxvii), 32, 147, 148. Although he purchased land in Westham in 1443, and was sometimes resident there, Battle Abbey mss, deed 1017. he remained a Portsman and, the earlier quarrels with his fellows forgotten, was selected to be a jurat at Winchelsea again in 1444. Cott. Julius BIV, f. 72. In a transaction witnessed by the mayor and jurats, on 2 July 1446 he put his lands and tenements in the liberties of Pevensey and Winchelsea in the hands of feoffees: John Godfrey, John Tamworth* and Thomas Grevet*, the former town clerk of Winchelsea. They in turn conveyed these holdings on 11 Sept. to a group of prominent Sussex lawyers. Battle Abbey mss, deeds 978, 980. Transactions of 1459 regarding his lands provide no clues about the date of his death: ibid 1029. Morfote’s intentions in making these arrangements are unclear, and he is not recorded again for certain. The clothier of this name who rented two workshops in the market-place at Rye in 1452-3 would seem to be another man, whose tenancy was soon after taken over by his heir, a butcher called John Clerk: E. Suss. RO, Rye mss, acct. bk. 60/2, ff. 35v, 39, 90.