SHELDWICH, John

More may be added to the earlier biography.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 351-2.

It is likely that the John Sheldwich admitted to Lincoln’s Inn at some point before 1420 was the MP, given that he paid 20s. in arrears to that society in 1449, by which date his putative father and namesake, another lawyer, was probably long dead.6 L. Inn Black Bks. i. 20; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1391. It has proved impossible to ascertain which of the two Johns was ‘keeper of the mayor’s seal’ at Canterbury in Apr. 1409 and Jan. 1419: C241/200/35; 212/10.

In Michaelmas term 1427 Sheldwich and his friend and fellow lawyer, John Pirie*, were entrusted with the custody of William Billyngton*, a mercer from Canterbury appealed of treason in the court of King’s bench.7 KB27/666, rex rot. 39d. Billyngton was cleared a few months later and began a term as one of the bailiffs of the city in 1428, but (as his chequered career shows) he was certainly capable of wrongdoing. Later, in July 1440, he and his co-bailiff of 1428-9, William Rose*, were accused in Chancery of having during their term allowed Sheldwich falsely to obtain £10 as a mainprise for a prisoner held in the city’s gaol.8 C1/9/412. Another Chancery suit, perhaps also of 1440, likewise relates to the trio’s activities in 1428-9. Of uncertain identity, the plaintiff alleged that he had suffered false imprisonment at the hands of the same two bailiffs and Sheldwich, but damage to the bill obscures both his name (possibly John Thomas) and the full details of his complaint.9 C1/11/348.

As the chamberlains’ accounts for Canterbury reveal, during the accounting year 1431-2 Sheldwich rode to London with William Rose, then serving his second term as a bailiff of Canterbury, and John Lynde* to pursue a case against the archbishop of Canterbury over a disputed fishgarth. The accounts also record that both Sheldwich and his fellow MP in the Parliament of 1433, William Bonnington*, forswore part of their wages for this long assembly, an indication of the burdens that paying the city’s parliamentary representatives were placing upon the civic purse.10 CCA-CC-F/A/1, ff. 212v, 223.

A decade later, Sheldwich came into conflict with Bonnington. By 1443 the former was bailiff of the abbot of St. Augustine’s manor of Chislet (lying between Canterbury and the Isle of Thanet), where in January 1444 he suffered an amercement and the seizure of his lands over an entry fine that the latter claimed from him. Bonnington responded by challenging the actions of the abbot and his bailiff in the court of King’s bench at Westminster, and seeking damages from them of 200 marks.11 Add. 32311, f. 42.

The commission of array on which Sheldwich was placed in March 1443 was for Kent, not Canterbury as previously indicated. As befitted his status as a lawyer, he was referred to as a ‘gentleman’ in the letters patent for this commission, as he was in a royal pardon he acquired just over three years later. He took possession of the letters when they were delivered to the city, and held them in his safekeeping until the following autumn. The other commissioners included John Stopyngdon, master of the rolls, a bureaucrat with Canterbury connexions whom the MP, acting on behalf of the city, entertained to supper at his house on one occasion in 1441-2.12 CPR, 1441-6, p. 200; C67/39, m. 8 (1 July 1446); CCA-CC-F/A/1, ff. 285v, 294; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 352.

The will of Nicholas Sheldwich, proved in the Canterbury burghmote on 20 Mar. 1502, indicates that he was the MP’s son, not (as previously supposed) his grandson. Nicholas’s will also reveals that the MP married twice, first Isabel, the wife recorded in the previous biography, and then Alice,13 Canterbury city recs., burghmote reg. 1298-1503, CCA-CC-O/A/1, ff. 19v-21. although it is unclear which of these women was the mother of Nicholas and his brother Thomas (or, indeed, whether the siblings were half-brothers).14 Thomas appears to have taken no part in the affairs of the city. He witnessed a deed in the burghmote in Sept. 1458 but was never admitted to the freedom of the city: Canterbury city recs., Woodruff’s list, CCA-CC-WOODRUFF, bdle. 4, no. 14. In January 1464 Nicholas received seisin of lands in Canterbury and elsewhere from his late father’s feoffees.15 Ibid. bdle. 9, no. 3.