PARKER, John V, of Lewes, Suss.

John’s father and namesake, a merchant who had represented Lewes in the Parliament of 1417, served as a juror in the town at inquisitions post mortem on three peers – the Lords Bardolf, de la Warre and Clinton – between 1423 and 1432. CIPM, xxii. 326; C139/30/54; 54/36. That his trading interests in Sussex were quite extensive is clear from the suits for debt he brought in the court of common pleas in the 1430s: including those against a ‘woolman’ of Chichester and a tanner of East Grinstead as well as a glover and a draper of Cliffe just outside Lewes, and a fellow burgess, John Hanmere* (who owed him £20). As his executrix his widow sued merchants of Dover for relatively large sums of money. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 11-12; CP40/680, rot. 157; 686, rot. 379; 699, rot. 240d; 724, rot. 357. It was John the father who expanded the family’s landed holdings by acquiring property in Ringmer near Lewes in the final decade of his life, CP25(1)/241/87/7, 24. and his standing in the county led to his inclusion on the list of men of Sussex required to take the oath against maintenance, as administered in 1434. CPR, 1429-36, p. 372. Still living in 1439, he died before 1442, by which date his widow had married another local man, Giles Wodefold*, elected MP for Lewes that same year. John senior’s affairs had still not been settled eight years later. CP40/715, rot. 14d; 724, rot. 357; 759, rot. 221.

John Parker the MP of 1453 must still have been a young man when his father died. A godson of John Nelond* of East Grinstead (whose brother had been prior of the great Cluniac priory at Lewes), he is first mentioned in 1437, as the recipient of a bequest of 20s. in his godfather’s will. PCC 21 Luffenham (PROB11/3, ff. 168v-169v). Relatively little is recorded about him, in comparison with what may be learned about his father. There is a slight possibility that he was the man of this name who served successive bishops of London (Robert Gilbert and Thomas Kemp) as bailiff of their episcopal liberties in Essex and Hertfordshire in 1444 and in Surrey and Sussex for about five years from Michaelmas 1445, E368/216, rot. 9; 217, rot. 2; 218, rot. 3d; 221, rot. 3d; 223, rot. 3d. and this post might have come about through his membership of Clifford’s Inn (which is not documented before 1464). His training in the law did not lead to a career in the central courts. Nor is it known whether Parker took an active role in the administration of his home town either before or after he sat in the Commons. What is certain is that he was qualified to represent Lewes by virtue of the land near St. Michael’s churchyard which he rented from the duke of Norfolk, as well as his tenancy of a shop he or his father had built in the marketplace and of other premises which came into his possession after the death of his mother and stepfather Wodefold. Arundel Castle mss, A1869, 1871; Suss. N. and Q. v. 98-100.

Not surprisingly, Parker became involved in the affairs of the latter’s family, notably in those of Giles’s sister Margaret and her husband Richard Sutton, for whom he acted as a feoffee of property in the town. Following Sutton’s death, disputes arose when the deceased’s brother and heir contested the purpose of the enfeoffment, and a suit in Chancery resulted in the late 1470s. C1/52/163-6. Although in 1478 Parker retained a house in St. Andrew’s parish in Lewes, abutting the wall of the castle and situated next door to a tenement belonging to his stepfather’s brother, Robert Wodefold*, E. Suss. RO, Suss. Arch. Soc. mss, SAS-WH/180. by then he had moved away from the town and taken up residence at Willingdon, near the Sussex coast at Eastbourne, where he had apparently inherited property from his mother. In his later years he became known as a ‘gentleman’. The date of his marriage to Agnes, daughter of Andrew Bate, a wealthy butcher and landholder from Lydd in Kent, is not known. Nor is the date of his death, save that it occurred before the autumn of 1482. He was said in a lawsuit of Hilary term 1483 to have named both Agnes and Bate as his executors, and by then she had married John Thatcher of Ringmer, as his second wife. The suit was brought in the court of common pleas by Thomas Sherman alias Baker*, in his capacity as executor of his late brother John Sherman†. Thomas claimed that Parker’s executors owed his late brother’s estate £11 13s. 4d., as the sum of two bonds which Parker had entered to John Sherman at Lewes in October 1468 and November 1470, but had failed to honour before he died. The Thatchers denied that Agnes had ever been assigned the administration of her late husband’s estate, and the matter remained unresolved for at least two years. CP40/883, rot. 437. Meanwhile, in Michaelmas term 1482 Bishop Story of Chichester had sued Thatcher for the abduction at Chichester of Parker’s son and heir, Edward, a minor whose marriage belonged to him. Thatcher’s plan was to marry the heir to his own daughter, Isabel, and the match was indeed made by the time he made his will in 1499. CP40/882, rot. 23; M.E. Mate, Daughters, Wives and Widows, 125; Suss. N. and Q. xii. 164; Vis. Suss. (Harl. liii), 22; PCC 16 Blamyr (PROB11/13, ff. 139v-140).