FENNE, William atte

William was a member of a prominent and prolific Great Yarmouth family, counting Thomas atte Fenne* and his son Hugh* among his relatives, but his place in the family tree is unknown. A Yarmouth borough court roll supplies the earliest definite reference to him, showing that he brought a trespass suit there in May 1416.4 Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll, 1415-16, Y/C 4/126, m. 4d. He stood surety for John atte Fenne in the same court nearly two and a half years later, but does not feature in John’s will of 1419.5 Ibid. 1418-19, Y/C 4/128, m. 1; Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Hyrnyng, f. 49. William had married by the spring of 1422, when he and his wife, Margaret, conveyed a manor in Edingthorpe, near the coast of north-east Norfolk, to John Baxter of Honing, John Roys* and other feoffees. Possibly part of her inheritance, the manor was not in her husband’s hands 20 years later.6 CP25(1)/169/185/69; Blomefield, xi. 28. There is no record of atte Fenne’s holdings in Yarmouth itself, other than that he rented a garden next to the town’s fish market from the borough in the second half of the mid 1430s and during the 1440s.7 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls, 1436-41, 1442-3, 1444-5, 1447-8, Y/C 4/145, m. 7; 146, m. 17; 147, m. 17; 148, m. 2d; 149, m. 18; 150, m. 1; 151, m. 8d; 154, m. 11d.

In 1422 atte Fenne became bailiff of Great Yarmouth, the only major office he held within the borough.8 There is a reference to him as receiver of pesage in the ct. roll of 1422-3 (Y/C 4/132, m. 12), but it is not clear whether this was a duty he exercised as bailiff or counted as a separate office. Upon his election to his first Parliament a decade later, John Hastyng* was one of the burgesses who stood surety for him as a new MP. He must have enjoyed a good relationship with Hastyng, who appointed him an executor of his will of April of the following year.9 Y/C 4/148, m. 22. By the time of his second Parliament, atte Fenne appears occasionally in the borough records as William atte Fenne ‘senior’, to distinguish him from a namesake now active in the town. The younger man, who had not long come of age (a leet court had amerced him in June 1433 for not having joined a local tithing, despite being over the age of 12), was perhaps his son by Margaret.10 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls, 1432-3, 1436-8, Y/C 4/141, m. 12d; 145, m. 1d; 146, m. 5d. It was perhaps the yr. William who committed an assault at Yarmouth in the mid 1430s: ct. roll, 1434-5, Y/C 4/143, m. 14. Margaret atte Fenne disappears from view after 1422. She may have predeceased the MP, since Agnes, widow and executrix of John Wright of Lowestoft, had married either atte Fenne or his younger namesake by 1440.11 Y/C 4/148, m. 5.

The Yarmouth court rolls and other records show that atte Fenne was a merchant, and one of some consequence. He had dealings with London, for a merchant from the City sued him at Yarmouth for debt in 1433, a case afterwards settled out of court. Among the commodities in which atte Fenne traded was grain. In the accounting year 1437-8, he shipped out 50 quarters of malt and 56 quarters of barley from Yarmouth in the vessel of Derik Gerardsone. Gerardsone was perhaps a ship’s master from the Low Countries, since atte Fenne acquired a royal licence to export barley to that part of the continent in April 1438.12 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls, 1433-4, 1437-8, Y/C 4/142, mm. 1d, 9; 146, m. 19; CPR, 1436-41, p. 329; DKR, xlviii. 323. No evidence about the producers of this grain survives, although some of it might have come from the estates of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, to whose abbot he entered a recognizance for £3 in the borough court two years earlier.13 Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll, 1435-6, Y/C 4/144, m. 9.

In November 1438, atte Fenne gave a like security to Gregory Draper* of Norwich, although for the much more substantial sum of £34 10s. 6d. He had spent some time in Yarmouth’s gaol a little beforehand, but whether this had any connexion with an action brought by Draper is impossible to say.14 Y/C 4/147, mm. 9, 10. At the beginning of the following decade he received a pardon for failing to answer Richard Bartelot of Henley-on-Thames in the court of common pleas, regarding a sum of just over £20,15 CPR, 1436-41, p. 329. and in 1445 Thomas Wetherby* sued him for a debt of £49 at Yarmouth.16 Y/C 4/151, m. 3d. He appeared in the borough court three years later to bind himself in another recognizance, this time for £10, to his relative Hugh atte Fenne and Denis Willys of Langley, Norfolk.17 Y/C 4/154, m. 21.

According to the antiquary, Francis Blomefield, atte Fenne made his no longer extant will in 1439 but he was still alive in August 1452, when the borough court ordered him to appear before it in connexion with the recognizance he had given to Gregory Draper nearly 14 years earlier.18 Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll, 1451-2, Y/C 4/158, m. 3; Blomefield, xi. 373. He is unlikely, nevertheless, to have lived much beyond that date.