The only merchant to represent Lincolnshire during our period, John Bell was returned to Parliament towards the end of a long and distinguished career, having already achieved a degree of influence which many of his landowning colleagues had cause to envy. Not much is known about his family background save that he was the son of a Boston man, who may also have made his living through trade. He first appears at Michaelmas 1380, when he began to account as bailiff in Boston for Edward III’s son-in-law, John, duke of Brittany and earl of Richmond. One year later he was bound over to keep the peace towards a neighbour named John Haddeley. This incident had no adverse effect on his progress, however, for in the following year he received the first of many royal commissions. That he was rapidly becoming a figure of some consequence in the area is clear from his appointment, in 1383, as receiver-general of the lands in Lincolnshire which had been forfeited by the earl of Richmond following his shift of allegiance to Charles V of France. In this office Bell paid out wages, supervised the audit of accounts and attended inquisitions dealing with the property in his care. When the Richmond estates were granted to Queen Anne in 1386 he again assumed the post of bailiff, which he retained until 1397, some three years after her death.
Thanks no doubt to his position as an employee of the Crown, Bell was able to extend his holdings by obtaining preferential leases at the Exchequer. In December 1385, Richard II’s queen, Anne of Bohemia (who was later to employ him), granted him for 60 years the farm of property in Boston called ‘Camerowe’. King Richard confirmed this arrangement by letters patent of June 1391, as did Henry IV when he seized the throne in 1399. A second, far more lucrative, transaction was effected at Langley in December 1392, whereby Queen Anne’s feoffees, with whom he had constant dealings in his capacity as bailiff, leased Bell the manor of Wykes (in Donington, Lincolnshire) at a rent of £100 a year. As a prominent and prosperous member of the mercantile community, Bell naturally participated in the religious and social life of Boston and its environs. In the summer of 1391, for example, he was a party to the endowment of the parish church of Leake (near Boston) by the widow of Sir Thomas Friskney. His main preoccupation at this time was, however, the foundation of a new guild of God and St. Mary in Boston itself. In this he was joined by several other distinguished townspeople, including Sir John Rochford and Sir Philip Tilney, who together paid £40 in September 1392 for a royal licence to acquire corporate status and endow the guild with land worth £10 p.a. Four years later he and five other brethren surrendered a further sum of 100 marks so that they might increase the value of their holdings to £22 13s.4d. Bell also belonged to Boston’s much older guild of Corpus Christi, whose members elected him as their alderman in about 1395. He was still in office in May 1398, when he obtained letters patent permitting the guild to secure additional rents in the town worth 23s.4d. p.a. Comparatively little evidence of Bell’s financial and mercantile affairs has survived, but we know that he played a prominent part in the cloth trade. The account of the alnager for Holland from 1395 to 1398 shows him to have been among the leading cloth sellers of the area, paying tax on 40 ‘dozens’. He also imported oil, wax, herring, canvas and Spanish iron. He was evidently well able to advance money to John, the son of Sir John Holt, j.c.p., in 1391, thus enabling him to buy back his father’s confiscated estates. His dealings in London were, however, marred by one city merchant’s refusal to honour a debt of £50; but he proved remarkably tenacious and, although the defendant was actually pardoned his outlawry for failing to appear in court, he refused to drop the case which dragged on for years. The award of a papal indult in 1394 allowing him to choose his own confessor serves as yet another indication of his growing prestige. Not long afterwards, he was acting as Richard II’s agent for the restitution of confiscated goods to a foreign merchant; and in April 1399 he was made the attorney of a royal clerk about to leave on the King’s ill-fated expedition to Ireland. At about this time, the bishop of Lincoln accorded him and his first wife a licence to celebrate mass privately in their own home at Boston.
Despite the confidence which he clearly inspired in the court party, and which probably led to his appointment as a j.p. in May 1398, there is every reason to believe that Bell’s political sympathies lay elsewhere. His decision to sue out a royal pardon just three weeks after taking his seat on the bench, no less than the several marks of favour soon shown to him by Henry IV, certainly confirm this suspicion. Bell had played a small but necessary part in preparing the ships which carried Bolingbroke’s expedition to Prussia in 1390, and he may perhaps have kept up some association with the future King. It is also possible that the John Bell who was made porter of Pickering castle in July 1399 and who subsequently served as an officer in the royal household for both Henry IV and Henry V (whom he accompanied to France in 1415), was, in fact, the merchant’s son. From about 1406 onwards our MP is often described as ‘the elder’, possibly to distinguish him from the King’s servant of that name.
A striking feature of Bell’s career during the first decade of the 15th century is his increased popularity as a feoffee-to-uses. He had always been in some demand in this respect, but his flourishing relations with King Henry made it even more desirable to engage his services. He continued to hold part of the Willoughby estates in trust, but most of the conveyances in which he was involved concerned the lesser gentry and yeomanry of Holland. He also became far more active as a royal commissioner and even took his place on an embassy to Scotland, but it was not until 1413, when he must have been well over 50, that he finally obtained a seat in the House of Commons. The breadth of administrative and mercantile experience which he then possessed was rivalled by comparatively few of his parliamentary colleagues, so it is all the more surprising that he was not apparently returned again. However, his interest in local government remained as strong as ever, and he did not relinquish his post as collector of customs until 1420. He was also one of the local notables who witnessed an important arbitration award made in 1415 between the abbot of Croyland and his tenants, but after this date he shouldered far fewer of the social obligations which he had so often fulfilled as a younger man.
The date of Bell’s death is not now known. He may have still been alive in October 1426 when a man of the same name was pardoned his contempt for refusing to accept a royal writ, but this reference could equally well concern the crown servant who, as we have seen, was perhaps his son.