COUPLAND, Henry

A merchant who lived and traded at Lyme Regis, Coupland attested the elections for the borough on three occasions, and held a leading place in the local community. His trading activities led him into trouble with the Exchequer over a cargo of 16 whole cloths, each worth four marks, and 3,000 pells, worth £33, which were seized by customs officials at Lyme in June 1427. It was alleged that he and his kinsman Alan Coupland had intended to ship this cargo to Zeeland on La Marie of Weymouth in their own names, concealing the fact that it actually belonged to an alien merchant called John Bussard, and thus defrauding the Crown of subsidies at the higher rate charged on foreigners. The Couplands were summoned to answer for the value of the goods in May 1433, and when they failed to appear the sheriff of Dorset was ordered to arrest them and bring them to the Exchequer on 22 June. Henry may therefore have sought election to the Parliament which met on 8 July in order to take advantage of the parliamentary privilege of freedom from arrest, or perhaps because he was intending to travel to Westminster to answer the charge in any case. He and his kinsman, appearing in the Exchequer by attorney, pleaded not guilty, and after protracted proceedings, eventually, at a court held by the chief baron John Juyn at Sherborne on 6 Apr. 1435, a jury found in their favour and they were acquitted.2 E159/209, recorda Easter rot. 8d.

Coupland headed the body of jurors who at Lyme on 27 Aug. 1436 elected Roger Crogge† as mayor and he himself as one of the two portreeves; and when he did so again four years later he was chosen as a constable.3 Lyme Regis ct. rolls DC/LR/B/1/2. A further term as constable followed in 1443, but the scarcity of records of the town’s administration means that there is no evidence whether he ever served as mayor. An additional indication of the extent of his trading activities is provided by a suit he brought in the common pleas in 1447, alleging that a gentleman from Winchester and two merchants of Southampton owed him £40.4 CP40/745, rot. 164d.