COCK, John II

Cock, who traded as a mercer, was a middle-ranking burgess of Bodmin.3 CP40/779, rot. 435d. As far as it is possible to tell, he was not of sufficient standing ever to be chosen mayor of the borough, but may nevertheless have contributed to local government in some smaller way, for he was on occasion among the group of townsmen who attested local deeds alongside the mayor.4 Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/811. He is first recorded in the autumn of 1445 when, in his capacity as executor of his neighbour William de Halle, he was sued for a debt of £28 by the Launceston merchant John Burnebury.5 CP40/739, rot. 117. Like many Cornish merchants, Cock had interests in the profitable tin trade, and it was in connexion with this that he and John Watts, a fellow Bodmin trader, came into conflict with two local gentlemen, John Treffry and Thomas Harry, who brought various suits against them in the stannary court of Blackmore, having taken the precaution of retaining the under steward’s clerk.6 C1/50/416.

It is not clear what, if any, property Cock owned in Bodmin, or the county at large, but it is possible that he was the man who in 1444 held lands in ‘Trewallam’ (?Trewall in St. Germans) from Tywardreath priory.7 Arundell (Tywardreath) mss, ART1/39. His identification is further complicated by the simultaneous existence at Bodmin of at least two other men of the same name, a yeoman and a tanner, as well as other namesakes elsewhere in Cornwall.8 KB27/819, rex rot. 6; C1/61/137; CPR, 1441-6, p. 123; 1452-61, p. 255.

In the early 1450s relations between the townsmen of Bodmin and their overlord, the prior of St. Petrock, which had long been tense, deteriorated sharply.9 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 296. On a regular basis the burgesses clashed violently with the monks who accused them of infringing their privileges and property rights. By the summer of 1455 the prior had grown weary of the persistent unrest, and petitioned the Crown for a special commission of oyer and terminer, which was appointed on 1 July. Along with other leading burgesses, Cock was specifically named as one of the trouble-makers, and that autumn outlawry proceedings against him were ordered by the justices of King’s bench.10 CPR, 1452-61, p. 255; CP40/779, rot. 435d. It is possible that Cock’s return to Parliament two years earlier had owed something to this increasingly acrimonious dispute, for in both 1453 and 1455 the merchants of Bodmin returned one of their number alongside a royal servant with no discernible links within the town.

Nothing is known of Cock’s activities in the Commons, and he is not heard of for some years thereafter. He was, however, still active in the mercery trade in September 1469, when on the pretext of retribution he and his associate Thomas Wotton seized the goods of a Breton merchant at Plymouth, and imprisoned their rightful owner, or so the Breton complained to the earl of Essex as acting chancellor in the summer of 1473.11 C1/49/18. Similarly, a mercantile dispute may have lain behind Cock’s arrest by the sheriffs of London on unspecified charges of trespass around the same time.12 C1/46/472.

The date of Cock’s death has not been discovered, but it was a younger man, perhaps his son, who served as mayor of Bodmin in 1500, and in the same year was engaged in litigation in Chancery with Robert Poyle of Fowey.13 C1/238/43.