SOPER, William

More may be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 405-8.

Soper’s extraordinarily long service as collector of customs at Southampton, inevitably left various financial matters to be settled after he left office in 1446. As late as 1451 he was still suing Thomas Gille I*, his fellow customer of the early 1440s, over a bond for £100 Gille had sealed at Southampton in 1444.4 CP40/761, rot. 108.

More has come to light about Soper’s friendship with members of the Chamberlain family, to which Joan, his mistress and second wife, belonged. Her presumed brother Thomas Chamberlain assisted him in his business affairs: on one occasion Chamberlain rode from London to Somerset on Soper’s behalf, and in 1454 he became the sole feoffee of Soper’s property in Eling, Dibden and Fawley, on Southampton Water, which he reconveyed a year later to Soper and his wife for term of their lives, undertaking that after their deaths he would pay the mayor of Southampton £2 a year from the revenues of the property to ensure that their obits would be kept in perpetuity. Soper made Chamberlain an executor of his will in 1458, and he duly took on its administration together with the testator’s widow.5 C1/16/301; Black Bk. Southampton, ii (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1912), 113-15, 123-5.