PENBRIDGE, William, of Lewes, Suss.

Penbridge was once described in a lawsuit as a mere husbandman, CP40/686, rot. 356. but the location and extent of the land he farmed are not recorded and in any case his activities in Lewes point to him being a townsman of some standing who was long remembered as the founder of a local almshouse. In June 1427, a year after his first return to Parliament, he served as a juror at the inquisition post mortem held in the town following the death of Thomas, Lord de la Warre, and he was similarly called upon in 1428 to provide information to the assessors of the tax levied on parishes, and on 10 Apr. 1432 at the post mortem for William, Lord Clinton. C139/30/54, 54/36; Feudal Aids, v. 163. By the last date he may well have already been elected as an MP again, for his second Parliament met just four weeks later. While this Parliament was in progress at Westminster Penbridge appeared in the court of common pleas to respond to the accusation of William Kele* of Rye (one of his fellow Members of the Commons six years previously at Leicester), that he had unlawfully refused to return a bond which Kele had entrusted to his safekeeping at Lewes. CP40/686, rot. 356. He was re-elected once more in 1433.

Penbridge again attended the common pleas in person in Michaelmas term 1435, this time as a plaintiff suing a number of his debtors, including a local goldsmith and a ‘painter’ from Chichester. CP40/699, rot. 369d. He is last recorded when once more serving as a juror at Lewes, this time at the post mortem on Sir William Phelip†, Lord Bardolf, in November 1441. C139/103/30. Two months later his son John attested the shire elections at Chichester, C219/15/2. which may suggest that John had entered his inheritance by that date. Certainly, the MP died within the next four years, having named John and his other son William as his executors. In 1445 and 1446 the brothers attempted to recover fairly substantial debts owed to their father’s estate by a number of people including men of Goudhurst, Kent, and Richard Fowell* of East Grinstead. CP40/738, rot. 93; 740, rot. 49. Maud Penbridge, who died before October 1448, may have been the MP’s widow. She had held a tenement called ‘Holtesplace’ in Fisher Street, Lewes, which was then sold by her executors. C146/493.

These executors included the Sussex lawyer Richard Profit, with whom William Penbridge junior was to be sometimes associated, and he also became involved in the affairs of a much more prominent man of law, Richard Jay*, who was seemingly related to the family. CP25(1)/241/89/29; 91/2, 10; CP40/796, cart. rot. Yet he himself set up in trade as a skinner, and became established as a member of the Skinners’ Company in London. CP40/856, rots. 139d, 422d; VCH Suss. vi (1), 228; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1490. William took up residence at Wadhurst near the border of Sussex and Kent, and in his will of 20 Aug. 1479 stipulated that a house there known as ‘Frekes tenement’ was to remain in the hands of feoffees nominated by the bailiffs of Lewes and four or five of the most honest and discreet men of the town, who were to ensure that every year the sum of one mark would be distributed among the poor men and women in the almshouse at Lewes founded by his late father, our MP. The almsfolk were to pray for the souls of the testator’s parents and kinsmen and for the welfare of the King, queen, prince of Wales, archbishop of Canterbury, bishop of Chichester and prior of Lewes, as well as ‘alle their gode doers of the towne of Lewes’. PCC 2 Logge (PROB11/7, ff. 11v-14) – printed in Suss. Wills, iii (Suss. Rec. Soc. xliii), 135-6. Further details of the initial foundation and the MP’s role in it have not survived.