POY, Simon, of Salisbury, Wilts.

Of obscure background, Poy was living and trading in Salisbury by the early 1420s. The occupation of ‘chapman’, which was accorded him on occasion, falls far short of an adequate indication of the breadth of his commercial concerns, for he dealt extensively in wine and large quantities of oil (imported through Southampton and brought on carts to sell in Salisbury’s markets). Even more important was his trade in woad and madder, commodities essential for the local cloth industry in which he took a close interest. A better description might be ‘mercer’. Brokage Bk. 1439-40 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1941), 2, 86; Brokage Bk. 1443-4, i (Soton. Rec. Ser. iv), 5, 84, 105, 121, 139; ii (ibid. vi), 228, 265, 276; Brokage Bk. 1447-8 (ibid. xlii), 20-21, 148-9, 154-5, 158-9, 178-9; Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (ibid. xxxvi), 96, 110, 127, 145, 165, 168, 197. Inevitably, such activities sometimes led to disputes for which resolution had to be sought in the law courts at Westminster. A London grocer sued by Poy for debt was outlawed in the court of common pleas, and Poy was himself alleged in 1433 to have unlawfully withheld the sum of 20 marks from the former knight of the shire John Benger†. CPR, 1429-36, p. 22; CP40/688, rot. 258. Merchants of Hampshire and Wiltshire who defaulted on bonds at the statute staple at Salisbury found their creditor Poy only too ready to sue out warrants for their arrest, to enforce repayment of substantial sums of money. C241/231/8; 233/16.

Poy’s involvement in the cloth trade led to his appointment by the Crown as alnager in Wiltshire and the city of Salisbury in March 1437 (with effect from the previous Michaelmas), and on the expiry of his seven-year-term he was reappointed along with William Ludlow (the clerk of the staple at Salisbury). As they were not replaced in office until the summer of 1451, CFR, xvi. 308; xvii. 259. Poy effectively took responsibility for the collection of alnage over a period of 15 years. All that while (and for much longer) he was actively involved in the government of Salisbury, assiduously attending many meetings of the civic assembly convened between 1426 and 1463. First General Entry Bk. no. 252, passim; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 7-68. At what precise date he became a member of the superior council of 24 is not known, but this probably happened quite early in his career. At the convocation held on 18 Dec. 1433 it was decided that a suitable building should be found by the city’s chamberlains to house an iron beam, scale and weights for enforcing trade regulations. Poy was the man elected to oversee its operation. First General Entry Bk. no. 293. He was also called upon to help collect money from the inhabitants of Salisbury for the payment of the wages of the city’s MPs and its share of parliamentary subsidies; while his services were similarly required for the assessment of such levies and of the funds needed to pay bands of armed men sent by Salisbury to assist in the defence of Calais in 1451 and to join the English forces in Gascony in 1452. Ibid. nos. 294-5, 352, 403, 443, 455.

Poy’s personal contributions towards Salisbury’s composite loans to the Crown while initially quite modest, gradually increased in size as he grew in prosperity and standing, rising from just 3s. 4d. in 1441-2 to £1 in 1448-9 and 1454. Ibid. nos. 345B, 360, 364, 391, 431; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 10. Although he was prepared to do duty as a juror at inquisitions post mortem held in the city – such as those following the deaths of Beatrice, countess of Arundel, Sir Humphrey Stafford* and the widow of Sir Edward Benstede†, C139/98/28; 105/9; 134/27. he resisted promotion within the civic hierarchy. On 2 Nov. 1442 he paid a fine of £4 to be excused the offices of alderman and reeve. Nevertheless, he did do stints as constable and chamberlain, in the years 1446-8. There may have been some discrepancies in his accounts, for on 27 Dec. 1448 he and his fellow former chamberlain were told to appear before the mayor and auditors in the council house on 15 Jan. following under penalty of £2 each. In the summer of 1450, during a period of considerable unrest in southern England which in Wiltshire resulted in the murder of the diocesan Bishop Aiscough, Poy was among those assigned to keep the peace in the city, in his case by patrolling the neighbourhood of the Market. First General Entry Bk. nos. 373, 423, 438.

As a member of the convocation, Poy participated in Salisbury’s elections to the Parliaments of 1432, 1449 (Feb.) and 1449 (Nov.). Furthermore, he attested the county elections held at Wilton for the Parliament of 1437, and attended the shire court again in the autumn of 1449 to stand surety for one of Salisbury’s representatives, the lawyer Edmund Penston*. Ibid. nos. 282, 408, 434; C219/15/7. He eventually reached the pinnacle of the civic hierarchy by being elected mayor on 2 Nov. 1452. As such he presided over the parliamentary election held at Salisbury on the following 25 Feb., and attested the city’s indenture drawn up with the sheriff of Wiltshire at the shire court on the following day. C219/16/2; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 4. One of those returned on that occasion was the outspoken John Hall II*, who Poy and his brethren in common assembly instructed to labour to the King and Council a bill for the welfare, peaceable rule and conservation of the peace in Salisbury, in an attempt to bring to an end the citizens’ disputes with Bishop Beauchamp. Poy withdrew £5 15s. from the common coffer to remunerate Hall for his efforts to obtain letters patent for Salisbury’s incorporation as ‘mayor and commonalty’. He may therefore be seen as a prime mover in the attempts of the citizens to assert their independence from the bishop’s authority. Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 22; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 234.

Poy was not elected as an MP until 1455, after nearly 30 years’ service in the city’s affairs. He was present in convocation for his election on 20 June. The Parliament met at Westminster on 9 July. Shortly before the start of the second parliamentary session in November he was named as an arbiter at home, to settle disputes between the mayor, William Swayn*, and two fellow members of the council of 24: Edmund Penston and Richard Hayne II*. Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 11v, 13v. Subsequently, he took on the role of assessor of parliamentary subsidies in June 1458, for the raising of the sum of £60 required by Henry VI for the defence of the realm early in 1460, for a gift presented to Edward IV on his visit to the city in August 1461, and for the wages of soldiers sent north to the siege of Bamburgh early in 1463. Meanwhile, in October 1460 he had been one of four supervisors of the city’s accounts. In January 1461, when Salisbury provided armed men to join the Yorkist army against that led by Margaret of Anjou, Poy sent one of his servants, and in July 1462 he contributed 10s. to help man The Trinite, about to put to sea under the earl of Kent, as well as £1 towards a loan to Edward IV. Ibid. ff. 33v, 39v, 42, 44, 45, 52v, 56, 58v, 61. Following his own time in the Commons he was party to Salisbury’s elections to the Parliaments of 1459 (once again also attesting the county indenture in the shire court), 1460, 1461 and January and April 1463. Ibid. ff. 38, 41, 51v, 59v, 64. His final official duties were as deputy mayor in the same spring of 1463. Wilts. Arch. Mag. lix. 161-2; Salisbury reg. of leases, G23/1/238, f. 5.

Poy belonged to the civic fraternity of St. George, of which he had been one of the stewards in 1438, and was on amicable terms with a number of citizens whom he regularly assisted in their transactions. First General Entry Bk. no. 341; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 546. In particular, he formed a close friendship with the sometime mayor William Pakyn* (d.1445), who asked him to be his executor, and the latter’s son Thomas*, for whom he was a feoffee of property in Fisherton Anger just outside the city. This brought him into contact with a co-feoffee John Aylesby*, an ironmonger from London who in 1445 named him among the recipients of his goods and chattels. CP40/748, rot. 294; Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, i. 160; CCR, 1441-7, p. 402; 1454-61, p. 402. Another former mayor, William Warwick*, asked Poy to supervise the administration of his will of 1446, and William Swayn chose him to be an arbiter in his dispute with Richard Balteswell in 1451. Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, f. 137v; First General Entry Bk. no. 446. The widow of a fourth mayor, Robert Warmwell, enfeoffed him of property in Salisbury, Fisherton Anger and Stratford sub Castle in 1457, for its settlement after her death on William Ludlow’s daughter and the latter’s new husband the lawyer Thomas Tropenell*. Tropenell Cart. i. 232-3. In November 1459 he joined William Hore II* in pledging that Hore’s son, William junior, would pay his fine of £4 to escape office as alderman and reeve. Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 38v.

In the tax assessments made in February 1451 Poy was said to be in possession of land in Wiltshire worth £8 p.a., and he also owned several properties in Salisbury. Together with his first wife he occupied a house in Endless Street, which had been settled on them and their issue, but by 1455 he given up his tenancy of this and certain other holdings, notably his corner tenement on New Street and Love Lane which had come into the possession of William Swayn, and a cottage in Drakehall Street which he had sold. Yet he retained a large house with a gate in Gigor Street, two more in Winchester Street, and other buildings opposite the market. E179/196/118; Salisbury Domesday bk. 2, f. 94v; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 71, 81, 83, 90.

Poy last attended a convocation at Salisbury on 28 Oct. 1463, Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 68. but the date of his death is not recorded. He was probably survived by his daughter Margaret, who married Richard Freeman†, the son of the wealthy merchant Thomas Freeman*, C1/67/113. and certainly by his wife Katherine, who in her will of 26 Mar. 1491 requested burial at his side, beneath a marble tombstone in St. Edmund’s church, Salisbury. PCC 41 Milles. It looks as if he had been a churchwarden of St. Edmund’s in 1446: Churchwardens’ Accts. St. Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum ed. H.J.F. Swayne, 358.