PALMER, John

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 4-5.

Little is known of Palmer’s early career, but it is possible that he underwent some form of professional legal training, for in 1420-1 he and the Exchequer clerk Simon Yurle* were paid 6s. 8d. by the executors of Sir Otto Trevarthian for searching the Exchequer records in order to procure a writ of supersedeas. SC6/823/35.

Among the urban officials of fifteenth-century England Palmer was out of the ordinary in that he presided over his own election to the Commons on not just one but two occasions, in 1429 and 1432. His motives for returning himself are unclear, but they were evidently not financial, for in 1432 he and his colleague, Nicholas Aysshton*, shared just 13s. 4d. in wages for a Parliament that lasted for more than nine weeks. Launceston bor. recs., B/Laus/137, m. 1.

The background to Palmer’s drawn-out quarrel with Nicholas and Thomas Tregodek* was his claim to the Tregodek estates at Tregodek (in South Petherwin), Curgalyn and Pennarth (in Morval), Launceston and elsewhere in the county. He staked his claim by October 1429, when he was pasturing his livestock on his opponents’ land, and the following autumn, so the Tregodeks alleged, he and a group of associates ransacked their residence and carted off household goods and grain worth more than £20. KB27/752, rot. 80d; CP40/681, rot. 129; 752, rot. 311. Such strong-arm tactics aside, Palmer also sought to bring the law onto his side, and before long began a suit in the court of common pleas accusing Thomas Tregodek and an associate, John Bant, of forging the deeds that underpinned Tregodek’s title to the property. Bant, so Tregodek complained to the chancellor, colluded with Palmer in this, and for a payment of £20 agreed to lose the suit, thereby invalidating his case. C1/12/87A-B; CP40/703, rot. 324; 706, rot. 335. The dispute rapidly escalated into open violence. On 3 Nov. 1437 Palmer encountered Tregodek in the London parish of St. Bride Fleet Street, seized him, and held him captive for more than a fortnight. Tregodek’s imprisonment may have played a part in persuading him to agree to submit to the arbitration of John Mayhew† and Richard Chicket, and on 4 Dec. 1439 at Newport near Launceston the arbiters pronounced their award, ordering Palmer to pay certain negligible sums of money to his opponent in settlement of all their disagreements. It is possible that the arbitration had been deliberately arranged by Palmer in his own favour (he was well acquainted with Mayhew, whose deeds he frequently attested and whom he would later serve as a feoffee), for in subsequent years he would frequently make reference to it in the Westminster law courts, while Tregodek strenuously denied that it had taken place as he reported. CP40/734, rot. 315d; KB27/752, rot. 80; Launceston bor. recs., B/Laus/59, 61. Whatever the truth of the matter, it was not long before the agreement, if indeed there had been one, broke down, and in early 1445 the justices of common pleas heard that in July 1443 Tregodek had attempted to murder Palmer at Exeter. CP40/737, rot. 138. Litigation between the parties was still ongoing at the end of the 1440s, but in January 1450 an apparently lasting settlement was confirmed by a fine, under the terms of which Palmer finally renounced his claim to the disputed property. KB27/752, rot. 80; CP40/752, rot. 311; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 1086.

Generally, Palmer’s relations with his neighbours appear to have been rather more cordial than his troubled dealings with Tregodek might suggest, but occasionally trouble did flare up. Thus, in the summer of 1447 he was reduced to suing the local lawyer Thomas Cork† and his associate Roger Squyer, a tanner, for the return of a box of muniments, CP40/746, rot. 355. and in the spring of 1463 he accused several members of the Talcarn family of abducting a servant, one Joan Talcarn, from his house. CP40/808, rot. 315.

It is possible that Palmer’s dismissal from the coronership in October 1450 on the grounds of his insufficient qualifications was in some way linked with the faulty view of a body for which he had been fined half a mark two years previously. KB27/749, fines rot. 2d; CCR, 1447-54, p. 203. He was still alive in October 1467, when he was named among the jurors swearing to the extent of the lands of Maud, the widow of Sir Hugh Courtenay† of Haccombe. C140/25/41.