PHILLIP, John (d.c.1440), of Great Yarmouth, Norf.

A spicer by trade, Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll, 1416-17, Y/C 4/127, m. 6. Although he was sometimes described as a ‘barker’ in Hen. V’s reign: Y/C 4/124, m. 12; 127, m. 3d. Phillip was active by 1413, when he sued an action of debt in Yarmouth’s borough court. Y/C 4/124, m. 2d. In January the following year he and his wife, Isabel, were co-plaintiffs in the same court, Ibid. m. 4. In 1409 a John Phillip acquired the custody of a manor at Horstead, Norf., a property which the Crown had confiscated from the alien priory of Caen, but it is not possible to prove that he was the MP: CPR, 1422-9, p. 113; CFR, xiii. 145. and he helped to appraise the goods of local debtors in 1420 and 1428. Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls, 1419-20, 1427-8, Y/C 4/129, m. 4d; 136, m. 19d. He himself was the defendant in a suit for debt heard at Yarmouth in March 1430. He owed the plaintiffs, John Fastolf* and William Swolle, nearly £10, and he suffered the confiscation of 200 ells of canvas, soap, cloths, a dagger or sword and a quantity of saffron as a result of their action. Ibid. 1429-30, Y/C 4/138, mm. 4, 15. Of sufficient prominence to swear the oath to keep the peace administered throughout the kingdom in 1434, CPR, 1429-36, p. 407. Phillip was clearly a burgess of some substance. He had at least one apprentice, John Boyden, who became a freeman of Great Yarmouth in the following year. Cal. Freemen Yarmouth, 2. As a merchant from an important east coast port, Phillip is likely to have traded abroad. Within England, he had contacts outside East Anglia, including a chapman from Berkshire whom he sued for debt in the court of common pleas during the 1430s. CPR, 1429-36, p. 481.

One of the bailiffs of Yarmouth in 1434-5, Phillip attested his own election to Parliament a few days before relinquishing that office. Still alive in February 1439, Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll, 1438-9, Y/C 4/147, m. 4. he died not long afterwards. On 9 Feb. 1441 Robert Umfrey of Yarmouth and his wife, Margaret, daughter and heir of the late John ‘Staple alias Phelipp’ appeared in the borough court to have a deed enrolled. Dated a day earlier, it was a quitclaim by which the couple made a release of all real and personal actions to the MP’s executors, Peter Dowe, John Dawy and Roger Wildegoos. Ibid. 1440-1, Y/C 4/149, m. 20.