STOKKES, Elias

More may be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 479.

Elias Stokkes, from the leading family of Derby, had a standing outside his native borough. In June 1416 he was named alongside Thomas Staunton* as an arbiter in a dispute between two gentry from the environs of Derby, Henry Booth* and John Fynderne, probably because of his association with the former, and on 29 Oct. 1422 he attested the parliamentary return for Derbyshire.2 M. Jurkowski, ‘Complicated Relations’, in Much Heaving and Shoving ed. Aston and Horrox, 43-44; C219/13/1.

The dominance of Stokkes, his family and allies over the town’s affairs was not to the liking of all his fellow townsmen. On 12 Nov. 1432 a commission was issued for the delivery from Nottingham gaol of Elias and four other leading townsmen, John Spicer†, Roger Wolley*, John Hoghton and John Shirley. Their detention was related to the violent struggle between two factions for control of the town’s government. This was the subject of several indictments made not only by a jury of townsmen but also by a grand jury sitting before commissioners of oyer and terminer on 1 Apr. 1434. These indictments show that the town had endured a turbulent period since June 1430 due to the activities of a confederacy headed by Nicholas Meysham*. This was undoubtedly an ex parte description of events because Stokkes’ faction was once more in the ascendant on the arrival of the justices. It is a reasonable inference that Elias and those imprisoned with him in 1432 were among the leaders of this faction: not only were Spicer, Wolley, Hoghton and our MP’s son, Thomas, among the jurors who laid the recent troubles exclusively at the door of Meysham and his supporters, but among the offences alleged against them was an attack on Reynold Cook, a servant of our MP. According to the jury, they had attacked the unfortunate Cook on 20 July 1432 because he failed to show them due reverence and on the following 8 Oct. they imprisoned him at Derby until he had paid them 6s. 8d. Further, imprisonment and an assault on a servant were not the only inconveniences suffered by Stokkes for there can be little doubt that two of Meysham’s confederates, William Orme and Robert Colman, used their influence as MPs in the Parliament of 1432 to have him (and John Spicer) appointed to the burdensome office of tax collector.3 CPR, 1429-36, p. 272; KB9/11/17, 18.

These difficulties came at the end of a long career. Although Elias’s family regained their pre-eminent position in the town, he himself played no further recorded part in local affairs, and he probably died soon after 1432. It was another Elias, perhaps his son or grandson, who in July 1446 sued out a general pardon as ‘of Derby, gentleman, alias of London’, and who in 1465 was sued for various trespasses by the town’s neighbour, the abbot of Darley.4 C67/39, m. 39; CP40/814, rot. 201.