WEATHERELD, William

More may be added to the earlier biography.7 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 794-5.

A merchant, Weathereld traded with the Low Countries and he was one of a group of non-Londoners who resisted the election in 1421 of John Warren, a mercer from the City, as the governor of the English merchant adventurers there. Soon after the new governor took up office in September that year, the provincial merchants protested that a clique of Londoners had controlled the election and refused to contribute to the new governor’s salary.8 N.J.M. Kerling, Commercial Relations of Holland and Zeeland with Eng. 150.

It was in January 1424, not 1423, that Weathereld, Sir William Phelip† and others secured their lease of two plots of land in Ipswich from the borough authorities. One of the plots in question lay in the parish of St. Mary at Quay, not that of St. Peter.9 Ipswich Bor. Archs. 23.

Weathereld served at least eight, not six, terms as a bailiff of Ipswich. In the early or mid 1430s Thomas Mynton esquire sued him, John Deken*, his co-bailiff of 1427-9, and their associate, Peter Terry, in the Chancery. Mynton’s bill concerned an episode that appears to have taken place in 1429. He claimed that he had contracted with the earl of Huntingdon to supply an archer for a force that the peer was taking to France, only for Weathereld and his colleagues to take legal action in the borough court against the archer, Thomas Hurt of Colchester, upon his arrival at Ipswich, the port of embarkation. Even though Hurt (who had probably committed an offence while waiting to sail) had received letters of protection from both the Crown and Huntingdon, he had ended up in the town’s gaol and the expedition had departed without him. Mynton claimed that the bailiffs’ actions had left him open to legal action on the part of Huntingdon, who had taken three bonds from him when he had agreed to provide an archer for the earl’s expedition.10 C1/45/254.

In the early 1440s Weathereld was sued in the borough court in his capacity as an executor for his fellow burgess John Joye*, who had died in the middle of the previous decade. The action of the plaintiff, Gilbert Debenham I*, was for trespass but the details of the case have not survived.11 Suff. RO, Ipswich bor. recs., petty ct. roll, 1443-4, C/2/3/1/51, rots. 14, 15d, 16.

The suggestion that Weathereld sat in the Parliament of 1447 as a replacement for William Rydout*, one of the men originally elected to this assembly, is unlikely since Rydout afterwards received the same wages for attending the Commons as the other MP, John Smith II*. The borough did make a payment to Weathereld and Smith of £3 6s. 8d. each for their parliamentary wages in January 1449, but it is possible that these payments related to the Parliament of 1445, another assembly for which no returns have survived.12 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 795; Ipswich bor. recs., chamberlains’ acct. 1446-7, C/3/3/1/1.

Having already served as a royally nominated j.p. in Ipswich, Weathereld was one of the first burgesses to hold the position by appointment of the borough, which had gained the right to select its own justices through its charter of 1446.13 CChR, vi. 54-55; Ipswich Bor. Archs. p. xxvii; Bacon, 106. One of his last actions as a j.p. as opposed to a justice, was to seek sanction against the lawless East Anglian knight, Sir Robert Wingfield*. In November 1447, while Wingfield was a prisoner in the Marshalsea, Weathereld and two fellow j.p.s for the borough, John Deken and Robert Wood I*, took the opportunity to send the King a letter of complaint about the knight’s activities the previous September. They certified that Sir Robert and his men had broken into a house in Ipswich with the intention of beating its inhabitant, that one of his followers had attacked and nearly killed Thomas Talbot (a servant of Gilbert Debenham I) there and that the knight had helped to shelter three men who had assaulted and injured a gentleman named Thomas Andrew on a royal highway within the town. They added that when they had held sessions of the peace at the end of the same September none of the jurors would dare to indict Wingfield and his men. Their complaint was to no avail, since the King chose to pardon the knight at the beginning of 1448.14 KB27/746, rex rot. 46.

Still alive in June 1453, Weathereld was dead by the following 18 July when his will, dated 28 Jan. 1451, was proved. He requested burial in the church of St. Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich, to the high altar of which he gave 100s. For his spiritual welfare he left a large chest of silver and gilt to the town’s priory of Holy Trinity, requesting that the prior and convent should hold anniversary masses for him, and for his wife Margaret after her death, and ordered his executors to re-roof the north aisle of the church of the local Carmelite friary. In return for this work, he requested that the friars should sing for the souls of him, his parents and benefactors for a period of 60 years and to pray for another burgess, the late William Debenham*. He also left 20s. to the Carmelites and each of the other friaries in Ipswich and five marks each to Master Richard Hadley and Friar John Yokesfford, again so that they would pray for him. He provided for his wife by awarding her his household utensils, a half share of his woollen cloth, wool, jewels and the debts owed to him and a life interest in all of his real estate. After the death of Margaret, who had not borne him any surviving children, the Carmelites were to have two meadows in the town that he had purchased from them; William Payne, probably one of his relatives, was to have two tenements there; and Joan Freberne was to have another tenement in Ipswich for life, with remainder to Payne. Outside Ipswich, Weathereld held property at Hintlesham, a few miles to the west. He left this to his illegitimate daughter Joan, who had married Thomas Aldham after the death of her previous husband, William Maister. She had borne Maister a son, another William, whom the MP directed should succeed her to the Hintlesham properties. Weathereld appointed two executors, his daughter and a fellow burgess, John Drayll.15 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Kempe, ff. 303-4. The probate entry at the end of the will refers to Joan as the MP’s ‘natural’ daughter.

Following Weathereld’s death, the Norwich alderman, Thomas Ellis†, sought a debt of £25 from his estate, by means of a lawsuit against Joan Aldham in her capacity as her father’s executrix, an action in which her husband was named as her co-defendant. In pleadings of Michaelmas term 1454, Ellis claimed that Weathereld had acted as a receiver of money for him, and referred to an account of October 1452 that had revealed the debt.16 CP40/775, rot. 434d. A few years earlier, probably during Weathereld’s last term as bailiff, Ellis had sued the MP himself over another debt, a sum he claimed from a foreign merchant, a ‘Dutchman’ named Herman Rollesthorp whom Weathereld had hosted at Ipswich.17 C1/1500/3.

Margaret Weathereld was still alive in the early 1460s when John Timperley II* successfully sued her for breach of contract in the borough court. He claimed that she had contracted to sell him two tenements in Ipswich (known as ‘Horkysleystenementes’) for £80 in March 1461, only subsequently to renege on this agreement. Upon considering the matter, a jury found for the plaintiff.18 Ipswich bor, recs., composite roll, 1464-5, C/2/10/1/2, rot. 2.