PELLEY, William

Little is known about this MP, although he came from a Dorset family and was perhaps related to Thomas Pelley, who in 1427 unsuccessfully claimed a moiety of the former Brunyng properties in Melcombe in right of his wife Christine.1 CFR, xiv. 303; JUST1/1540, rot. 26. Styled a ‘gentleman’, William apparently trained to be a lawyer and was probably the man of this name who brought a suit in the King’s bench in 1429 regarding the theft of timber and under-wood from his land at Holt in the east of the county.2 KB27/672, rot. 46d. The surviving records of Dorchester, the borough which returned him to the Parliament assembled on 12 Jan. 1431, do not mention him. For the most part Members of the Commons successfully avoided appointment as collectors of the subsidies they themselves had granted, but Pelley was made responsible for the collection in Dorset of the one and one-third fifteenths and tenths due for payment in the following November and at Easter 1432. His place of residence was then given as Sturminster Marshall, near Wimborne Minster, so it may be that he was not expected to act in the county town itself.3 CFR, xvi. 68.

At an unknown date Pelley had stood bail for Richard Camvyle, a labourer from Weston in Gloucestershire, guaranteeing that he would stand trial in King’s bench for felonies committed in Warwickshire. However, he failed to produce Camvyle in court on the designated day, and was outlawed for neglecting to pay the resulting fine. He secured a pardon of outlawry on 30 Oct. 1432, after giving himself up to the Marshalsea prison.4 CPR, 1429-36, p. 226. A much more prominent Dorset lawyer, John Newburgh II*, engaged his services as a feoffee in 1441, and at the parliamentary elections held in Dorchester early in the next year he stood surety for Newburgh’s attendance in the Commons as a shire knight.5 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 358-9; C219/15/2. Nothing more is heard of him.