ABBOT, John I

In the early fifteenth century the Abbots were among the leading merchants trading through the adjacent ports of Weymouth and Melcombe. Almost certainly related to Thomas Cole† (d.1413) of Weymouth, they were the chief beneficiaries of Cole’s will, for he stipulated that if his only son died without direct heirs the three sons and two daughters of his friend and executor John Abbot senior were to inherit his lands and property in Dorset and Somerset. John Abbot junior, the future MP, was specifically left a reversionary interest in Cole’s property in Ilchester, Somerset, and this he had acquired by 1424. His brothers Robert and William benefited from Cole’s will in a similar fashion.5 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 627-8; PCC 27 Marche; W. Buckler, Ilchester Almshouse Deeds, no. 115.

John was perhaps younger than Robert, who was the first of the three brothers to be elected to Parliament and the only one to be named among the leading figures of Dorset who in 1434 were required to take the generally-administered oath against maintenance. With regard to their public service the brothers led separate lives, and it should be remarked that although Robert was always called ‘of Melcombe’ and served as bailiff and mayor in that borough as well as its representative in Parliament,6 For Robert’s mayoralty of 1428-9 (not mentioned in his biography in The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 1), see Dorchester Recs. ed. Mayo, 269. John was nearly always called ‘of Weymouth’. It may therefore have been he, rather than their father, who was bailiff of Weymouth in 1415-16, especially as the older man had served in the superior office of mayor, in Melcombe, several years earlier. As a ‘merchant of Weymouth’ John junior was the defendant in a suit for a debt of 20 marks brought in the court of common pleas in the Michaelmas term of 1419,7 CP40/635, rot. 72d. and he was certainly active in the affairs of Weymouth by March 1421, then being one of the four men who attested the parliamentary returns for that borough. On this occasion his brother Robert was elected for Melcombe. John attested the electoral return for Weymouth again in the autumn, and both he and Robert were present at the shire elections held at Dorchester in October 1422. John himself entered the Commons as a Member for Weymouth in the following year. At Michaelmas 1426, at the end of what may have been his second term as bailiff, he appeared by attorney in the Exchequer to render account for Scottish coins forfeited according to proclamation. That he continued to be a leading burgess is clear from the appearance of his name on the indentures recording Weymouth’s elections a further five times, and as a witness to local deeds.8 C146/6374.

Although nothing definite is known about Abbot’s property-holdings in Dorset, some of his commercial activities may be traced. He was once more a defendant in the common pleas in a suit for a substantial debt in 1426, and two years later William Waryn†, the Salisbury grocer, sued him for a debt of £18 and his brother Robert for £20.9 CP40/661, rot. 218; 669, rot. 218d. Described as a merchant a few years later he was associated with some men of Southampton, including John Fleming*, accused of a trespass by Thomas Rokes II*, receiver-general of Queen Katherine, although precise details of the charge are lacking.10 CPR, 1429-36, p. 165. The Abbot brothers’ mercantile activities should be seen against the background of the continued long-term failure of the inhabitants of Melcombe to raise sufficient money to pay the fee farm and parliamentary subsidies due to the Crown, exemplified by the many petitions they sent to Parliament in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. John himself was a member of the jury in September 1430 when royal commissioners came to Melcombe to assess the extent of depopulation and poverty in the wake of natural disasters and attacks by the French. The trade of the port had suffered badly, and John’s brother William was one of the merchants particularly affected.11 E143/25/1; J. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 450. In response to petitions presented at the Parliament of 1433 Melcombe ceased to be a head port for the collection of customs and subsidies along the Dorset coast, its place being taken by Poole.12 PROME, xi. 125; CPR, 1429-36, p. 298. That same year, John and other merchants were alleged to have attempted to ship wool and fells to Normandy without paying the requisite customs duties.13 E159/210, recorda Mich. rot. 24. The specific charges laid against our MP by the barons of the Exchequer related to shipments of wool, said to be worth £350 in all, which he had made from Weymouth in the eight months from July 1428, in some instances smuggling them across the Channel by night. However, when the chief baron eventually came to hear the case at Sherborne in August 1435 he was cleared.14 E143/22/7.

In these difficult circumstances at their home ports, the Dorset men allegedly took to piratical activities. Late in 1434 John and Robert Abbot, as joint-owners of a barge called Le Petir of Weymouth, were held responsible for the capture off Barfleur of the Seint Julian, the seizure of her cargo of wine, iron and other goods, worth 225 marks, and the subsequent imprisonment at Melcombe of her passengers. In the following January orders were issued for the arrest of the vessels and for prisoners to be conducted to Chancery; and a month later the Abbot brothers, together with the master of their barge, entered into recognizances for 500 marks with Clement Mark, the merchant of Rouen who had chartered the Seint Julian, as guarantee that they would accept arbitration or abide by the award of the chancellor, Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells. The Abbots asked William Balsham*, then controller of customs at Poole, to be an arbiter on their part. Whatever the outcome of this episode, it failed to dissuade the Abbots from further exploits at sea, and in March 1436 one of their ships was in the small fleet which captured the Seint Nunne while she was at anchor in the harbour of St. Pol de Leon in Brittany and took her to Plymouth, seizing her cargo, which was said to be worth £100. It was not until the autumn that the sheriffs and other officials of six west-country shires were ordered to arrest the culprits.15 CPR, 1429-36, p. 471; 1436-41, p. 83; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 350-1. In a petition to the chancellor from the same period, Richard Beauchamp, a merchant from Guernsey, sought redress from the Abbot brothers following the piratical seizure near the Channel Islands of his pinnace by the crew of a vessel belonging to them, and its removal to Dartmouth by the notorious captain William Kydde. The Abbots were said to have made off with a cargo of cloth worth £40.16 C1/45/14.

As a leading figure in Weymouth, John was sometimes called upon to act as a feoffee of his neighbours’ property. Thus, he was enfeoffed by William Wyot* of a tenement on the quay in the High Street, adjoining the common landing-place, which he and his fellow trustees released to William Mountfort* of Bridport in 1434; and following Wyot’s death he was one of the administrators of his goods. This led to a lawsuit in 1435, when those in charge of the estate of the late Robert Penne† sought to recover a debt of £26 left owing by Wyot.17 CP40/699, rots. 26, 390; CAD, vi. C6110. A year later Abbot was bound over to pay Mountfort the sum of £21 15s., yet he apparently came to be on cordial terms with the latter’s heir, William Oliver I*. In 1439 he was associated with Oliver in recognizances in £40 to Richard, duke of York, the lord of Weymouth, the two men undertaking to abide by the arbitration award of four of the duke’s legal counsel regarding title to a messuage and land in Wyke Regis and a moiety of the ferry of Smallmouth, which had previously belonged to Mountfort.18 CAD, vi. C6080; C146/10644. Oliver, dissatisfied with the ruling, subsequently placed the disputed properties in the hands of feoffees headed by the marquess of Suffolk and Sir James Butler, afterwards earl of Wiltshire. It is of interest to note that when the earl’s retainer Henry Filongley* was returned for Weymouth to the Parliament of February 1449, Abbot stood surety for his attendance in the Commons. But not too much should be read into this, for he also provided mainprise for Filongley’s companion William Tyrell II*, who was probably the nominee of the duke of York. Abbot again appeared as a mainpernor for the borough’s representatives in the autumn of 1449 and in 1453.19 C219/15/6, 7, 16/2.

On two of these occasions John’s elder son Nicholas joined him in providing sureties for the appearance of Weymouth’s representatives in the Commons. Nicholas and his younger brother Henry were now beginning to take their place in the local community: the former was to be bailiff of Weymouth in 1460-1, and Henry held the same office seven years later. Another member of the family stood surety for the borough’s MPs in 1467.20 CPR, 1461-7, p. 540; SC6/1113/15, 1114/4; C219/17/1. The date of death of John the MP is uncertain. A man of his name was recorded shipping cloth on Le Trynyte of Weymouth in November 1460,21 E122/119/2. but the MP certainly died before 28 Jan. 1461. On that date his son Nicholas conveyed to feoffees, including the prominent Dorset lawyer John Newburgh II* and Henry Smart* of Winchester, a house and land at Piddletrenthide, a grant which his brother confirmed three days later. Shortly afterwards the feoffees transferred ownership to Hyde abbey, Winchester. It may well be the case that the Abbots were making provision for John’s soul.22 Winchester Coll. muns. 14777-9.