BELLE, Thomas

A merchant, Belle was part owner of the Ghost of Southampton, which he used to transport goods from France, and he also possessed a boat built in Portsmouth, which is recorded entering Southampton Water in January 1427 with a cargo of wine. He imported five tuns, a pipe and a hogshead of wine on another vessel in the following month, and on occasion he also traded in iron and cloth.6 E122/184/3, pt. 3, ff. 8v, 9, 22v; Port Bk. 1427-30 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1913), 31, 58, 61. In the Michaelmas term of 1423 Belle was attached to respond to charges brought in the court of common pleas by John Choude and his wife Joan, the widow of Raymond Clyve, a former burgess of Southampton, that he had failed to render account for certain barells of wine, a quantity of woad and large sums of money left in his possession as Clyve’s bailiff and receiver. He denied the charge, and claimed that he had duly accounted for certain of the items to Joan before her second marriage.7 CP40/651, rot. 537. He himself brought actions in the same court against his debtors. For instance, in Easter term 1425 he had suits pending against a draper and the executors of a weaver from Sherbourne, Dorset, for debts amounting to £4 10s., and against John Carpenter I* of Portsmouth for the more substantial sum of £30.8 CP40/657, rot. 57. Whether the latter dispute had been settled by the time he and Carpenter represented Portsmouth together in the Parliament of 1431 does not appear. While the Parliament was in progress, in the Hilary term of that year, Belle and his wife Margaret were being sued by the prior of St. Mary’s in Southwark for a debt of 40 marks owed by Margaret’s former husband, a saddler from Salisbury.9 CP40/680, rot. 71. It may be that the marriage had brought him property or trading interests in the Wiltshire city.

Previous to his election, Belle had occupied a succession of offices in Southampton over a period of more than 20 years, and had become a prominent figure in the town. He had been asked by Thomas Haseley†, the secondary clerk of the Crown and clerk of the Commons, to transfer seisin of ‘Sutton’s Place’ near Southampton to Nicholas Banaster on his behalf, in 1420.10 CCR, 1419-22, pp. 62, 65. It is, therefore, curious that he was never elected to Parliament for Southampton, only for the much smaller borough of Portsmouth, and also that the burgesses of Portsmouth were content to be represented by the then mayor of the town which dominated their trade. Belle is not recorded after the end of this second term of office. He left his widow in possession of a house in French Street, which thereby came to her third husband, John Emery, the merchant and sometime mayor who had served as a bailiff during Belle’s final mayoralty.11 Cart. God’s House (Soton. Rec. Ser. xx), 300. In 1449 as executrix of our MP’s will, Margaret brought an action in the common pleas against a merchant from Launceston for £9 6s.8d. still owing to his estate.12 CP40/754, rot. 266.