BALMAN, John

If this was the same John Balman who gave evidence at the proof of age of William Pocock at Chichester in 1428, he probably came from Easebourne, to the north of Midhurst, for he had been present at Pocock’s baptism there in 1406.3 C139/42/79. It is likely that John the MP was related to Philip Balman, a citizen of Chichester who served on a jury there in 1409 regarding the goods confiscated from a felon, and was still living in 1422.4 E159/186, recorda Hil. rot. 11; C131/65/2. Following John’s only recorded service as one of the two reeves of Chichester, he was a regular witness to deeds in the city, even though there is no evidence that he held any other local office.5 Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxxix. 131-2, 136-7. He did, however, act as a juror at the inquisition held there in November 1432 regarding the lands of the late countess of March.6 C139/59/39. Balman’s first election to Parliament, in 1447, occurred 20 years after his term as reeve. Meanwhile, a John Balman ‘the younger’, described as a yeoman, had stood surety for the newly-appointed alnager of Surrey and Sussex in February 1446, but his relationship to our MP is not known.7 CFR, xviii. 7. Balman was returned to the Commons again in 1449 and attested the Chichester elections to Parliament on 26 Feb. 1453.8 C219/16/2.

Little information survives about Balman’s personal circumstances, save that he was a chapman by trade and probably lived in the tenement he held outside the west gate of Chichester. He and his wife also had possession of two fields and a ‘gore’ (a triangular-shaped piece of land) in the nearby tithing of Fishbourne, of which they died seised. The date of Balman’s death is not known. His heir was his daughter, Gillian, sometime the wife of John Ryman, who in 1499 transferred to her son John Sawyer the property and fields outside Chichester which she had inherited from her father.9 Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxxix. 140-1, 146.