SAPURTON, Roland

While Sapurton’s origins are obscure, it is possible that they lay in the east Midlands. Evidently, he was of some standing at Rochester long before elected as MP, since as far back as June 1439 he helped to arbitrate between John Nicoll IV*, a mercer from the city, and Richard Hierde in a dispute over a horse.2 CP40/731, rot. 114. His role as an arbiter suggests that he made a living by practising law, rather than any trade: it is worth noting that it was as ‘of Rochester, gentleman’, that he was pardoned his outlawry on 30 Nov. 1445, for failing to answer Agnes Ashley of London in the court of common pleas over a plea of debt.3 CPR, 1441-6, p. 382. In 1456-7, moreover, he joined Richard Bruyn*, Edmund Chertsey* and John Rowe, certainly all lawyers, in auditing the accounts of the wardens of Rochester bridge for the previous decade.4 Rochester Bridge Trust, wardens’ accts. 1456-7, FO 1/52. It was probably also in a professional capacity that he delivered a bequest of ten marks from John Halman to the bridge wardens in the following year.5 Ibid. 1457-8, FO 1/54. No details of Sapurton’s activities in his sole Parliament, which assembled at Westminster on 7 Oct. 1460, survive, but he and his fellow burgess, Edmund Chertsey, may have lobbied on behalf of their city for the new charter eventually granted in December 1461.6 P.H. Bartlett, City of Rochester Chs., 31-34.

It is an Exchequer lawsuit of the following year that provides a possible clue as to Sapurton’s origins. In a bill of Michaelmas term 1462, Roland Sapurton, perhaps the MP if not someone else sharing his relatively distinctive name, identified himself as the ‘servant’ of Elizabeth Venour, warden of the Fleet, and accused the defendant, John Rotheley, then in the custody of that prison, of detaining a couple of books (both primers) from him. According to Sapurton, he had entrusted the books to Rotheley for safekeeping while in the London parish of St. Bride, Fleet Street on the previous 1 June. It is very likely that this Roland was related to Elizabeth, who was a Sapurton by birth and had brought the hereditary office of warden of the Fleet in marriage to her late husband, William Venour. Venour’s immediate predecessors as warden were her father, Roger Sapurton (d.1434), and uncle, John Sapurton (d.1414), while her grandfather, another Roger Sapurton, who had died in possession of the office in 1412, had been born at Sapperton in Church Broughton, Derbyshire.7 E13/148, rot. 50; J.S. Burn, Hist. of Fleet Marriages, 37; CIPM, xii. 379; xxiv. 169-70.

Whether or not he was the plaintiff of 1462, the MP was certainly still alive at that date since he survived until 1465. In his will of 20 June that year, he asked to be buried in St. Nicholas’s parish church, Rochester, and left small sums to provide for obits and to the parish clerk. After his death his feoffees were to deliver his property in the city to his widow, Margaret, who was also to have the residue of his goods and whom he appointed his sole executor.8 DRb/PWr 2, f. 317.