POTAGER, John

More may be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 124-5.

In 1422 Potager stood surety for Thomas Chertsey† of Rochester, in relation to a violent dispute between Chertsey and the lawyer, Henry Hickes*.3 CP40/647, rot. 9. In the following year, both he and Chertsey likewise stood as guarantors that Thomas White and William Golbrond of Rochester would keep the peace towards Hickes.4 KB27/647, rex rots. 3, 15. Hickes’s quarrels at Rochester probably sprang from a long-running rift within the ruling elite of the city, and there was no love lost between him and Potager. In Michaelmas term 1425, when the latter sued Robert Kyppyng of Rochester in the court of common pleas for the payment of an obligation of ten marks, Hickes acted as Kyppyng’s attorney. The dispute was referred to arbiters, who found in favour of Potager, but Kyppyng refused to abide by their award. Eventually a jury settled the matter, although it awarded Potager just 20s. in damages, a sum he finally received in November 1429.5 CP40/659, rot. 526. There were further tensions between Potager and Hickes in the later 1430s. In Hilary term 1438 Hickes was brought before the barons of the Exchequer to answer for a breach of the peace, requiring the forfeiture of a bond he had entered into in 1422. His alleged offences were assaults on Potager’s wife, Joan, in March 1434 and again in early 1435, and causing injury to Thomas Chamberlain, vicar of St. Nicholas, the home parish of both him and the Potagers. In due course a local jury acquitted Hickes of assaulting Joan but found him guilty of attacking the vicar.6 E159/214, recorda Hil. rot. 8. It has not been ascertained whether Thomas was a kinsman of Hickes’s adversary, Sir Roger Chamberlain*.

In the midst of his quarrels with Hickes, Potager also fell out with the prior of St. Andrew’s, Rochester, over a rent for a property called ‘ubleland’ in St. Margaret’s parish. The dispute came before Bishop Langdon of Rochester in April 1425, when Potager submitted to an arbitration made by the bishop’s officials and several of his fellow citizens.7 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Rochester Diocese bishops’ registers, Langdon, DRb/Ar 1/8, f. 45. Some of Potager’s activities while bailiff of Rochester in 1441-2 – an office not noticed in the previous biography – also resulted in litigation, for during that term one Hamon Bele accused him in King’s bench of illegally selling victuals while holding municipal office.8 KB27/723, rot. 19d. Later in the same decade, two servants of the archbishop of Canterbury sued him in the same court, for failing to pay ten marks due for a messuage in Rochester, which they had delivered to him for the ‘common use’ of the city. A jury subsequently found against Potager in this matter, despite his unlikely defence of illiteracy.9 KB27/740, rot 86. The entry in the plea roll for Bele’s suit records that Potager was a chandler, as does a royal pardon he purchased in the autumn of 1446.10 KB27/723, rot. 19d; C67/39, m. 22 (8 Nov.). It would appear, therefore, that he had changed trades, since he was a ‘mercer’ at the beginning of Henry VI’s reign.11 KB27/647, rex rot. 15.