PARKER, John III, of Hastings, Suss.

In July 1441 when John Parker ‘junior’ was deemed to be insufficiently qualified for the office of Cinque Ports’ bailiff to the annual herring fair at Yarmouth, his putative father (then bailiff of Hastings) was one of three men nominated from whom Hastings was to choose a substitute. Ibid. 14. Nevertheless, John was deemed to be able enough to represent his home Port in the Parliament which assembled in the following January, and 18 months after his service in the Commons he proved acceptable as one of the Ports’ bailiffs at Yarmouth. He and his fellows were tardy in completing their business at the fair: a year after their return home they had still not brought their written accounts to the Brodhull at New Romney to re-claim costs incurred while defending the Ports’ rights. Ibid. 17-19.

Given the regular involvement of the men of Hastings in supplying fish to the royal establishment, it is likely that he was the John Parker who was commissioned in November 1443 to arrange for fish to be delivered to the Household over a period of six months. CPR, 1441-6, p. 218. Parker’s putative father and namesake last represented Hastings at a Brodhull in April 1444, White and Black Bks. 17. although he was still alive in October 1448, when distinction was still being made between John ‘senior’ and ‘junior’ with regard to the exemption from parliamentary taxation claimed by them as Portsmen. E179/229/138. Presumably, it was the younger John who served as bailiff of Hastings in 1448-9, and was sent from this Port as a delegate to the Brodhull of 15 Oct. 1450. White and Black Bks. 28.

As John ‘junior’, Parker claimed exemption from taxation from 1434 to 1448 with regard to his chattels outside the liberty of Hastings, at Wilting, Ore and Fairlight, and it was probably he who continued to do so in the last two years of the decade. E179/226/71; 227/94; 228/107, 112, 131; 229/138, 151. Listed among the tenants assessed for a scot in 1455 to fund works on the Pevensey Levels, he was one of the 12 ‘shawers’ who assessed this levy. C260/149/16 (printed in Suss. Arch. Collns. liii. 52). He is not recorded thereafter.