ABRAHAM, Richard

Richard’s name was an unusual one.2 Even so, there is no sound reason to believe that the Portsmouth MP was the same person as Richard Abraham or Aburgham, esq., who took part in the conquest of Normandy. That Richard crossed the Channel in July 1417 as a man-at-arms in the retinue of Sir John Grey, and on 19 Apr. 1419 was granted by Hen. V in tail-male the lands late of Sir Stephen de St. Martin in the bailliage of Gisors, in return for supplying one man-at-arms and three mounted archers for the King’s service. He was appointed capt. of Etrepaigny (Eure) at some point before Jan. 1424; served under Sir John Salvain at the siege of Orléans in 1429, and by 1434 had almost surrounded his original lordship of Saint Martin with further holdings which he had acquired by purchase and otherwise: E101/51/2; C64/11, m. 53; R.A. Massey, ‘Land Settlement in Lancastrian Normandy’, in Property and Politics ed. Pollard, 80, 84; Gallia Regia ed. Dupont-Ferrier, iii. 401; Gesta Hen. V ed. Williams, 277; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. mss, 25768/387. His precise relationship to the two other members of his family who represented Portsmouth in the Commons in this period is not revealed in the surviving records, but like them he took a leading part in local affairs. He witnessed a deed in the town along with his kinsman Henry Abraham in February 1425, and was made bailiff in the following year for the first of three terms. At his only election to Parliament, in December 1436, two former MPs for Portsmouth, Walter atte Berne II* and Simon Stubbere*, stood surety for his appearance in the Lower House. He was party to the conveyance in 1445 of some arable land in nearby Kingston, and when last recorded alive, at Easter 1448, he was again in office as bailiff.3 Winchester Coll. muns. 15239, 15241; C219/15/1.

Half-an-acre of land which had belonged to Abraham was no longer in his possession by 1469, and it may be that Margaret Abraham, the widow who had sold a plot of the same size in ‘Maryfield’ six years earlier, was his relict.4 Portsmouth Recs. ed. East, 500; Add. Ch. 15858.