PASSENHAM, Ralph

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 23.

Passenham’s interests were extensive enough to need the protection of a large number of actions in the court of common pleas. In Hilary term 1425 he took the trouble to appear personally there to pursue a suit against a local gentleman and various tradesmen for taking from Northampton a horse worth four marks. Other actions show he had landed interests outside the town. In the mid 1420s he had at least 20 sheep grazing at ‘Quyntongraunge’, a few miles to the south, until they had the misfortune to be killed by dogs owned by some local husbandmen. He also had property at Towcester: in Trinity term 1428 he sued an action for a trespass allegedly committed there late in the reign of Henry V. CP40/656, rots. 242, 253d; 670, rot. 215; 672, rot. 148. He may even have had concerns further afield. Both he, in the mid 1420s, and his executors, 20 years later, had occasion to sue actions of debt against husbandmen from south-west Cambridgeshire. CP40/733, rots. 57, 218d; CPR, 1422-9, p. 439. These landed interests explain why he is described as a ‘yeoman’ in a near contemporary list of Northampton’s bailiffs, and even occasionally appears as a ‘gentleman’ in the legal records. For example, he is described as such when defending an action of debt as an executor of William Stokton, a Northampton shoemaker. He was dead by Hilary term 1444 when his executors, John Passenham and John Creton, sued a gentleman of Market Harborough (Leicestershire) for a debt of £10. Northampton Recs. ed. Markham and Cox, ii. 557; CP40/689, rot. 340; 732, rot. 281.