WORSOP, John

Nothing is now known about Worsop’s family background, although it may be speculated that he was related to a namesake, a ‘painter’ living in London in the 1420s and 1430s. That older John Worsop had perhaps been apprenticed to Thomas Wright, whom he served as an executor. Together with Wright’s widow he received sums of money from William, Lord Botreaux, in part payment of the 468 marks Botreaux owed to the deceased. In 1429 the painter stood surety for a haberdasher called William Wodeward, committed the guardianship of the sons of a girdler; he had business dealings in 1435 with a ‘coffer-maker’, and he served on a jury in 1439 in a plea brought before the civic authorities by members of the Goldsmiths’ Company.6 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 176, 178, 276; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 93, 196.

The MP’s career took a rather different path, which it is possible to chart from his admission as a member of the Drapers’ Company at some point before the autumn of 1441. Even so, the extent of his developing trading concerns is only sketchily documented, and many years passed before he held a major office in the Company. Worsop was often a recipient of ‘gifts’ of goods and chattels, transactions closely associated with business dealings and frequently used as security for merchandise which was bought on credit. This suggests that he was active as a wholesale supplier of goods, in particular to customers who were mercers.7 CCR, 1441-7, p. 32; 1447-54, p. 134; 1454-61, p. 268; 1461-8, p. 395. He took a strict approach to his debtors. One of them, a mercer named Thomas Kirkby, complained in Chancery that although he had offered to repay Worsop the sum of £27 8s. he owed him Worsop refused to accept payment until the due day was past, and had one of Kirkby’s sureties arrested. Those who owed Worsop money were rigorously pursued in the law courts, but not always successfully, as appears from the case of a ‘gentleman’ from Wells in Somerset who although outlawed at his suit for £9 managed to obtain a royal pardon.8 C1/15/46; CPR, 1467-77, p. 11. For his lawsuits in 1465 see CP40/815, rot. 439, when he was suing a gentleman from Suff. for £102, a merchant of Newcastle-upon-Tyne for £54 10s. 3d., and the widow of John Richardson* of Newcastle for £52 15s. 3d.

How far Worsop became engaged in overseas trade remains unclear, especially as his successive offices as controller and collector of customs in the port of London in the last seven years of Henry VI’s reign meant that he was barred by statute from trading there on his own account. Nevertheless, during his time as controller he was associated with John Wood III*, the under treasurer of England, and two members of the royal household in a scheme to export wool belonging to the Crown to sell abroad at the King’s profit. On 17 Apr. 1454, the very day that he left office, the Council approved the grant of a pardon to the four men of all the money received by them for the sale of this wool and a waiver of their accounts, while remitting the consequences of any trespasses they had committed in shipping it. One outcome of their activities was that after the Yorkist victory at St. Albans in the following year the Commons petitioned Parliament to protest about evasion of the staple at Calais by the shipment of 1,226 sacks of wool marked with a crown, alleging that Wood had embezzled the greater part of the customs due, amounting to some £3,000.9 CPR, 1452-61, p. 157; E159/231, brevia Trin. rot. 4d; RP, v. 335-6 (cf. PROME, xii. 444). It is unclear what part Worsop played in this alleged fraud. He was not mentioned by name in the petition, and it may be that there was no evidence of any misdoing on his part, although it may be remarked that his appointment as customer in March 1455 had ended prematurely soon after the Yorkists had gained power. A certain degree of attachment to the Lancastrian regime is suggested by the loans Worsop made to the Exchequer in the 1450s: one of £20 at the start of his controllership, another of £10 in July 1457, and a much more substantial one of 100 marks in November 1458.10 Repayments were authorized in May 1453, July 1457 and Dec. 1458: E403/793, m. 2, 810, m. 9, 817, m. 5. However, these loans may well have been connected with his offices as controller first of tunnage and poundage and then of the great custom in the four years from 1456, rather than arising from any personal commitment to Henry VI.

From the early 1450s Worsop’s activities in trade and as a financier led to his handling very substantial sums of money, and to involvement in the affairs of members of the nobility – an involvement which he later had cause to regret. Thus, he made a serious miscalculation in his financial dealings with James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, whom he had to sue in the mayor’s court in London for the large sum of £406, which he had either loaned to the earl, or else expected as payment for draper’s goods supplied to his wardrobe. After the earl had defaulted four times, Worsop took the opportunity of the Yorkist triumph at St. Albans and the removal of his debtor from the treasurership of England, to pursue him further. On 13 June 1455 he came into the chamber of the Guildhall of London to claim the silver plate and other valuables that the earl had pledged as surety for repayment. Though worth less than the sum owed him, these items were formally valued at £328 15s. 3d., and included besides basins, pots, dishes, cups and silver candelabra, a gold standing cup (worth £25), another gold cup with a sapphire set in its cover (worth £46), and, most important of all, a monstrance weighing a hefty 94 lb. and valued at as much as £166 8s. 6d.11 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, pp. 148-9. The same period saw Worsop ‘maliciously and falsely’ (or so he claimed) indicted for the theft from George Howton* and others at Boscombe, Wilts., of jewelry worth £55 and £55 in money: KB27/782, rot. 58. The late 1450s were a period of troubled relations between the merchants of London and their counterparts from Italy, when economic difficulties resulted in riots in the city. Some of the most serious disturbances arose from a plot hatched at Corpus Christi (16 June) 1457, when a mob gathered at Hoxton with the intention of killing the Italians who lived in Lombard Street. Those allegedly involved included one of Worsop’s servants, who was examined before the mayor and aldermen on the next day,12 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 389. and although he himself was not accused of actively participating in the attacks, he may have shared the feelings of many Londoners suffering severe damage to their trade in this period. An opportunity for some redress came in August 1458 when he was among those commissioned to search the dwellings of Genoese merchants and seize their goods, although in the event the orders to the commissioners were countermanded by the lords on the Council, seeking to defuse the explosive situation in the capital.13 CPR, 1452-61, p. 444. Besides his dealings with the earl of Wiltshire, Worsop’s less well documented association with another member of the Council are of interest. In November 1457 he entered recognizances with the chancellor, Bishop Waynflete, in two sums of £26 10s. each, payable at Easter and Michaelmas following. These he duly paid, but the conditions of the bonds are not revealed.14 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 283-4.

In the closing years of Henry VI’s reign Worsop was summoned to appear before the barons of the Exchequer to answer accusations about his illicet trade in wool and cloth. In Hilary term 1458 it was alleged that he had shipped 220 sacks of wool worth £140 directly to Zeeland, evading the staple at Calais. He promptly appeared before the barons to show them a royal pardon. But a more serious charge followed in Trinity term, when he was accused of breaching the statutes by trading in cloth to the value of 100 marks during his time as controller of tunnage and poundage, between October 1456 and Easter 1458. Worsop protested that he had sold the goods in question (300 lengths of cloth) to the earl of Wiltshire before his appointment as controller, but the Exchequer process against him continued until a new King was on the throne and Worsop had secured a pardon from him.15 E159/234, recorda Hil. rot. 15, Trin. rot. 9; C67/45, m. 41.

Worsop’s motives in seeking election to the Parliament of 1460 are difficult to guess, but he must have been eager to have a seat in the Commons, for he looked outside the capital for a constituency willing to return him. He had been removed from his office as customs controller on 1 Aug., in the wake of the Lancastrian defeat at the battle of Northampton, and he may have hoped to recover it. There is nothing to indicate that he actively supported the new Yorkist regime, either at this time or later, and yet the borough which elected him, Horsham in Sussex, belonged to John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, who was one of York’s allies, and it is worth noting that the other MP chosen, John Harowe* (who like Worsop was a Londoner), was to meet his death fighting for York at the battle of Wakefield. It is undoubtedly significant that on 3 Oct. (just four days before the Commons assembled), Worsop placed some of his property in the hands of two men: one, his former apprentice John Ashwell, was an obvious choice as someone acting in his interests, but the other was John Stodeley*, the London scrivener who had long been in the duke of Norfolk’s service and was destined to represent another Mowbray borough in the forthcoming Parliament.16 Corp. London RO, hr 189/16. Perhaps the transaction was part of a deal made with the duke’s advisors for securing Worsop’s return. Nothing is known of his whereabouts until after the Parliament was dissolved in February 1461. At that time he was still trying to recover the large sum of money owed him by the earl of Wiltshire (a committed adherent of Margaret of Anjou), and matters grew more complicated when the earl was beheaded after the battle of Mortimer’s Cross on 3 Feb. and the new duke of York seized the throne a month later. In the previous summer Worsop had entrusted the precious monstrance to a goldsmith named John Adys to sell on his behalf; but following Wiltshire’s attainder in Edward IV’s first Parliament, the monstrance was claimed to be among his possessions which were subject to forfeiture to the Crown. The goldsmith, whom Worsop held responsible for the loss of the piece, commenced a suit in Chancery against him in retaliation.17 C1/10/72.

Worsop was appointed neither to office nor ad hoc commissions of royal administration under the new regime, which suggests that he had done nothing while the Commons were in session to forge useful links with the Yorkists, and his record of service to the Lancastrian monarch was held against him. Nevertheless, he was granted a pardon on 11 Feb. 1462, which protected him from further prosecution for trespasses committed while controller of customs.18 C67/45, m. 41. The Crown long continued to pursue him for the moveable goods once belonging to traitorous earl of Wiltshire. In 1467 the King’s attorney alleged that he had taken possession of items of plate worth £200 in London in March 1461 (shortly after the earl’s execution), and he was summoned to make answer in the Exchequer on pain of £50. In his defence he asserted that the earl had sold him these items in May 1460, and he was eventually acquitted after a jury pronounced in his favour.19 E159/243, recorda Hil. rots. 7d, 10d. A cynic might well note that this acquittal coincided with Worsop’s agreement to make a sizeable financial commitment to King Edward to further his alliance with Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. In the summer of 1468, he was listed among a group of 62 men (for the most part London merchants), who undertook to forward £10,000 to four Florentines acting as factors for the duke, to help pay for the dowry of the King’s sister. Worsop’s contribution amounted to £200, a sum equalled by 26 of his fellows and exceeded by only two. They were promised, and were duly made, assignments on the first instalment of the two fifteenths and tenths granted in the recently-dissolved Parliament.20 E404/74/1/45; E403/840, m. 10.

During the 1450s and 1460s Worsop’s financial affairs, and perhaps also his political stance, were not only affected by his close dealings with the earl of Wiltshire, but also by his involvement in those of Butler’s fellow Lancastrian Henry Percy, Lord Poynings and earl of Northumberland, who was killed at Towton. It seems clear, too, that his connexion with the latter was also a significant factor in securing his election to Parliament for Horsham in 1460. The connecting link was forged by the clever lawyer Thomas Hoo II*, an important figure in Horsham who was not only a councillor to the borough’s lord, the duke of Norfolk, but also Percy’s principal agent in southern England. Worsop collected assignments at the Exchequer on Percy’s behalf in 1448 and 1459,21 E403/771, m. 8; 819, m. 6. and began to have dealings with Hoo in 1454. In July that year Hoo was bound to him in the sum of £522 7s. 9d. at the staple of Westminster, and, as Hoo later acknowledged, further statutes of the staple left him owing Worsop £1,189 1s. 1d. by the end of the decade. Following the earl of Northumberland’s death in 1461 Hoo took on the responsibility for paying off the deceased’s enormous debts (totalling £4,455), and the former Poynings estates were placed in the hands of feoffees to enable him to do so from the income raised. According to Worsop, Hoo promised that he should receive from the feoffees an annuity of 100 marks for six years and then £109 p.a. for three years, and agreed that he might retain the staple bonds until satisfied.22 C241/253/4; C1/43/109; Collectanea Topographica et Geneaologica ed. Nichols, iii. 267. A crisis in Worsop’s affairs came in summer of 1470, so that on 25 June he placed his goods and chattels in the hands of Edward Story, bishop of Carlisle, and two leading Londoners, the alderman Ralph Verney*, and the recorder Thomas Urswyk II*,23 Cal. P. and M. London, 1457-82, p. 165. but during the Readeption Parliament, which met on 26 Nov., he felt able to go on the offensive, and pursued Hoo for payment of the original debt of £522 7s. 9d., demanding payment by Christmas 1471, and he also brought suits prosecuting Robert Rodes*, the lawyer from Newcastle who was among the feoffees responsible for paying the earl of Northumberland’s debts. Matters became even more complicated in 1473, when Hoo sued Rodes for a debt of £74 13s. 4d., and was able successfully to claim through the London courts £63 1s. 6d. which Worsop owed Rodes; while at the same time Urswyk (another of the feoffees) managed to obtain £33 6s. 8d. owed him by Rodes, by claiming it from Worsop.24 CCR, 1468-76, no. 650; Cal. P. and M. London, 1457-82, pp. 80, 82. Meanwhile, Hoo vehemently asserted in the court of Chancery that he had satisfied Worsop of everything due to him, although Worsop contended that he was still owed £479.25 C1/43/109.

The size of his loan to Edward IV, and of the sums owing to him by Hoo and the earl of Northumberland provide a measure of Worsop’s wealth. Another is his investments in property. Initially, his holdings appear to have been contained within the walls of the city of London, and concentrated in Cripplegate ward where in the 1440s he possessed a garden off Coleman Street and unspecified lands and tenements in the parishes of St. Stephen and St. Alphage. He also owned a building in Cheapside, known as ‘The King’s Head’, which he leased to Canterbury cathedral priory.26 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 13; CPR, 1446-52, p. 177; C1/19/194; Canterbury Cath. Archs., Dean and Chapter mss, CCA-DCc-ChAnt/L/127A. In 1459 an important purchase from John Wroth of Enfield and his wife, (Sir) Roger Lewknor*’s daughter, brought him two messuages, one of them called Le Bolehede, and shops situated just off Cheapside, and it was these properties that he put into the hands of Ashwell and Stodeley a year later.27 London hr 188/22, 23; 189/16. Worsop’s second marriage, to the widow of a fellow draper, Robert Colby, further increased his property portfolio. The match had probably been contracted by 3 Apr. 1462 when Worsop was party to a bond in 250 marks offered to the chamberlain of London, guaranteeing that he would deliver to the authorities the patrimony due to Colby’s daughters, Edith and Elizabeth, when they came of age or married. It was no doubt he who arranged Edith’s marriage to his former apprentice John Ashwell a few months later.28 Cal. Letter Bk. London, L, 4-5, 18, 29. His marriage to Colby’s widow also brought him an annuity of six marks paid by the prior and convent of Sele, in Sussex, in accordance with an agreement the prior had made with Colby in 1453.29 Cat. Suss. Deeds, i. 162.

Much further away, in Dorset, Worsop acquired an estate consisting of the manor of Bradpole, the hundred of Redhone and Beaminster Forum and some 40 messuages and 260 acres of land. The estate had belonged to the Russell family and since 1432 Sir Theobald Gorges alias Russell* had spent many years fruitlessly trying to establish his title to it, before finally, in 1468, accepting that it now belonged to Worsop. It came into the draper’s possession by a series of transactions sealed in 1457, when it was held by the earl of Wiltshire and his feoffees, so it looks likely that he had obtained it through his determination to recoup the losses he had suffered as the earl’s creditor.30 CCR, 1468-76, no. 133; C140/50/34. Nearer to home, Worsop had set his sights on manors in the south-east. His complex negotiations with the heirs to the widespread estates once belonging to the judge Sir William Rickhill (d.1407) reveal his aspirations for his descendants to enter the ranks of the gentry. Although the judge had been survived by four sons (including William†, John* and Thomas Rickhill), by the early 1460s the male lines had all died out, leaving as heiress to the bulk of the family property Thomas’s only daughter, Joan. In 1465 she, the wife of Richard Ashby of Warwickshire, made a quitclaim to Worsop of her title to the manors of Mokelton Hall in Essex and Islingham in Kent, together with some 860 acres of land and 50s. rent, as well as property in Tower Street and Thames Street in London. Final concords made in Hilary term 1468 completed the transaction, and when Worsop took out a pardon on 23 Sept. that year he was described not only as ‘draper of London’, but also as ‘of Islingham, gentleman’.31 London hr 195/39; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 64; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 210-11; C67/46, m. 23. Worsop’s intention was to ensure a sizeable jointure for his daughter, Joan, when she was wedded to Joan Ashby’s son and heir, Thomas, who now adopted the surname of his maternal grandfather. Worsop’s association with Thomas Rickhill in a Kentish lawsuit of 1467 suggests that the contract had been sealed before then. Settlements of the Essex properties were subsequently made to the use of Rickhill and his wife, and all the other holdings recited in the final concords were in Rickhill’s possession when he died in 1477. His heir was Worsop’s young grandson John.32 KB27/826, rot. 115d; C140/57/61; Archaeologia Cantiana, xxxii. 63-66.

Curiously, it was only at a very late stage in his life, in the 1470s, that Worsop began actively to participate in the government of London. Earlier on, he had shown an interest in the welfare of certain city orphans,33 Cal. Letter Bks. London, K, 401; L, 69. but no inclination to enter the arena of city politics. Why he chose to do so in his mature years is unclear. Having attested the parliamentary election in London in the spring of 1472 (only the second time he ever did so), he was elected one of the auditors of the city in the following September, and, as was customary, re-elected to the office a year later. During that second term he made a brief will on 8 Apr. 1474 and died five days later. Given his wealth, his testamentary provisions were meagre in the extreme: a mere half a mark each to the high altar of the church of St. Mary Le Bow on Cheapside, where he wished to be buried, and to Bethlehem hospital; bread worth the same paltry sum to prisoners in the gaols of Newgate and Ludgate; and just 3s. 4d. to each of three leper houses outside the city walls. Nor were there particularly valuable bequests for his children: his daughters Isabel Kendale and Joan Rickhill were simply left necklaces which had belonged to their mother. Worsop’s widow Joan was to have half of all his moveable goods and his livelihood at Ingatestone in Essex, and she and John Beauley* were named as executors. Worsop’s connexion with Beauley, an obscure lawyer who also acted for him as a feoffee of the former Rickhill estates, is of interest since Beauley had also represented a Sussex borough in the Parliament of 1460.34 PCC 16 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 120d). Isabel’s husband has not been identified. There is no evidence to show if he was John Kendale†, the executor of Humphrey Stafford IV*, earl of Devon, with whom Worsop was at odds in his final days: C1/48/415. Worsop’s son William, who was not mentioned in his will, was said to be his heir and aged over 21 at the inquisition post mortem conducted in Dorset in the autumn,35 C140/50/34. Although inquisitions were also ordered in Kent (CFR, xxi. nos. 225-6), none survive. but within a few months the Dorset estate had been scooped up by the local family headed by John Newburgh II*, and nothing more is heard of the Worsop heir.36 J. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 155; SC6/1243/1. The widowed Joan made a gift of her goods and chattels to Sir William Tailor† and Thomas Hill, both of them aldermen and grocers of London, on 1 Apr. 1480.37 CCR, 1476-85, no. 654; Cal. P. and M. London, 1457-82, p. 177. She was perhaps a kinswoman of Hill’s wife, Elizabeth, for in her will of 1501 the latter remembered members of the Worsop family with affection.38 C54/361, mm. 28d, 29d.