APPLETON, John

It is possible that the MP belonged to the family living at Dartford in Kent, and was one of the two John Appletons named after their father, who had made his reputation as an experienced auditor at the Exchequer. In his will on Christmas Day 1392, the father left all his lands and tenements in Kent to his widow, Elizabeth, for life, with successive remainders in tail to his six sons (John senior, Thomas, William, Richard, John the younger and Roger), and finally to his daughter Agnes.1 PCC 7 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 51). Two of the sons, Richard (d.1420) and Roger (d.c.1467) emulated their father by following careers as auditors in the Exchequer, while their sister Agnes married yet another auditor, William Hesill, who rose to be third baron of the Exchequer before his death in 1425.2 Profession, Vocation and Culture ed. Clough, 111; PRO List ‘Exchequer Officers’, 115-16.

One of the sons named John (probably the elder one) was associated with Hesill as a mainpernor for a man from Dartford in 1402, witnessed deeds in the same neighbourhood later in Henry IV’s reign, and served on a commission of sewers along the Thames from Bermondsey to Deptford in 1417.3 CCR, 1402-5, p. 128; 1409-13, pp. 67, 206. The same John was probably the ‘esquire’ who was subsequently party to transactions regarding property in ‘Old Ford’ in Stepney.4 CCR, 1419-22, pp. 256, 258. But it would appear that it was the younger John who was appointed executor of the will made by their brother Richard in 1420, in company with Richard’s widow Katherine and the Hesills, for John ‘the younger’ was cited in a petition sent to the chancellor before July 1424 by Katherine and her new husband John Derby. This stated that Richard had purchased from his father’s widow tenements far away in Northamptonshire, in Walcot and Southorpe, and had asked John to release the property when required, but although in his will Richard expressed the wish that Katherine should keep these tenements for life, John refused to make estate to her.5 PCC 48 Marche (PROB11/2B, f. 384); C1/5/50.

By the spring of 1429 Thomas Appleton was calling himself ‘son and heir’ of John Appleton of Dartford, which implies that the eldest of the brothers, John senior, was then dead without surviving issue. Their mother Elizabeth had relinquished to Thomas the manor of Dartford and some 300 acres of land in Darent, Sutton, Wilmington and elsewhere, and Thomas now placed these properties in the hands of William Ryman* and others, to whom that May John Appleton, styled ‘clerk’, made a quitclaim. The feoffees then settled the estate on Elizabeth for life with successive remainders to her sons ‘Master John Appleton, clerk’ and Roger in tail, to the heirs of Thomas by Alice his wife, to Elizabeth’s grandsons (the two sons of the late Richard Appleton), and finally to Agnes Hesill and her issue.6 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 451-2, 471-2; 1429-35, pp. 59-60, 236. A later petition to Chancery asserted that John and Roger ‘ymagenyng to disseyve’ Thomas, defeat the entail and disinherit Thomas’s daughter Anne, had bargained with him to have the property for a certain sum of money. Later, encouraged by his confessor to right all wrongs he had done, Thomas made further enfeoffments in the interest of his daughter, now the wife of William Aleyn. The Aleyns disputed the title of Anne’s uncles, and with the help of leading lawyers reached an accord with them in March 1433 whereby the brothers would keep the estate if they paid the Aleyns five marks p.a. for their lifetimes. Nevertheless, they broke the agreement.7 C1/70/12.

Apart from the ‘clerk’ from the Dartford family of Exchequer officials, there was another John Appleton, who might be thought to have been the MP. Rather than becoming a ‘clerk’ this John had followed a military career. In August 1426 his arrest at Southampton was ordered at the suit of merchants from Rouen and Flanders, for the recovery of goods allegedly taken by him at sea. Subsequently engaged in the service of the Crown on the Isle of Wight, he was appointed to a commission of array there three years later, and in the will which Philippa, dowager duchess of York, made at Carisbrooke castle in 1430, he was given a bequest of as much as 100 marks (the same sum as she bestowed on Thomas Chaucer*, one of her executors).8 CPR, 1422-9, pp. 363, 553; Reg. Chichele, ii. 459. Even so, there is no firm evidence to link this highly-regarded esquire with Wiltshire, where the borough of Great Bedwyn lay.

We are perhaps on firmer ground if we identify the MP with the John Appleton who in the early 1440s was employed as keeper of the mansion in Fleet Street, London, belonging to Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury. It was arranged that the royal ‘ordenance’ for the war in France should be made there, but the workmen employed to do so caused a great deal of damage to tables, door-mantles and forms, and Appleton was held responsible to the bishop for the cost, amounting to £2. A royal warrant sent to the Exchequer on 5 July 1443 instructed that he be recompensed in full, but three years elapsed before he received any payment.9 E404/59/264; Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 455. A further link with Salisbury is indicated by the recognizances which Thomas Pakyn*, an attorney from that city, entered to one John Appleton in January 1445, although nothing is revealed about the background to the bonds. Appleton was named as a recipient of the goods and chattels of John Savage of Westminster, ‘gentleman’, in October that year, and of a London cordwainer in April 1446.10 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 280, 402, 457.