BALSHAM, William

Although on occasion Balsham was described as ‘of Dorset’, the whereabouts of his place of residence in the county is not given. Generally, he lived in Ilchester, the county town of Somerset, and it was there that he attested four of the shire elections to Parliament.3 C219/12/2, 5, 14/2, 15/1. He and John Brympton were tenants of a messuage and several acres of land outside the town at Northover, but on 23 July 1420 a large number of townsmen from Ilchester, led by Thomas Gryme and Gilbert Bouche, allegedly outsted them by force. They petitioned the chancellor for redress. The same properties and the same incident were outlined in a second petition, except that in this document Balsham and his wife Alice were the petitioners,4 C1/4/170, 5/159. and in a third petition the Balshams alleged that Gryme and William Botreaux II* had seized possession of a house and a plot of land belonging to them in Ilchester itself, on the following 8 Oct.5 C1/5/83. Perhaps the property pertained to Alice as her own inheritance, or as dower from a previous marriage, and Gryme and Botreaux were challenging her title.

Balsham’s career was largely spent as controller of customs and subsidies in the ports of the West Country, holding office for nearly all of the 34 years between 1410 and his death in 1444. How he first came to the attention of the authorities is not revealed, but he evidently proved competent in the role. From initial appointments in Melcombe he moved to the Devon ports of Exeter and Dartmouth, on to Bridgwater in Somerset, and then, for the last 20 years, back to the Channel ports of Melcombe, Poole and Weymouth. It was stipulated that he would write the rolls in his own hand, reside in the head port and delegate nothing to deputies.6 CPR, 1422-9, p. 447. While so serving – and thus presumably while active in Melcombe – he was returned to Parliament by that borough seven times between 1422 and 1442, while Lyme Regis, another port falling under his direct supervision, elected him once. The burgesses of Melcombe had petitioned the Parliaments of 1410, 1421 (May) and 1426, pleading that because of poverty and depopulation their port could no longer function properly as a centre for the collection of customs. Then, at the petition of the Commons of 1433, when Balsham was present as one of Melcombe’s representatives, the town was degraded from its status as a ‘head port’ to that of a creek, and thereafter Poole took its place as headquarters of the customs administration for the Dorset coastal area.7 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 375-6; PROME, xi. 125; CPR, 1429-36, p. 298. It seems likely that Balsham himself presented the petition. Melcombe’s demotion made little difference to his role as controller, save that his official base moved east to Poole.

For the most part Balsham’s activities were focused on Somerset and Dorset, but a few days after the close of his fourth Parliament, on 26 July 1432, he stood surety at the Exchequer for the lessee of the Sussex manor of ‘Monkenecourt’, pertaining to the alien priory of Mortain.8 CFR, xvi. 100. As was to be expected, Dorset men sometimes sought his assistance. In February 1435 the brothers John Abbot I* and Robert Abbot†, together with the master of their barge Le Petir, asked him to act as an arbiter in their quarrel with the merchant Clement Mark. The latter had chartered a vessel called the Seint Julian, which, it was alleged, the Abbots had seized off Barfleur with her valuable cargo of wine. The gravity of the matter is clear from the size of the recognizances binding the parties to agree to arbitration.9 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 350-1; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 1-2. In the spring of that year Balsham was associated with the lawyer Alexander Hody*, a fellow Member in three of his earlier Parliaments, in a conveyance concerning the Somerset manor of ‘Westdylyngton’.10 Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 86-87.

In his will, made on 1 May 1444, Balsham requested burial in the house of Dominican friars at Ilchester, if he chanced to die while in the town. Small bequests were to go to the local churches of St. John the Baptist, St. Mary the Less and St. Mary Major, as well as to Wells cathedral and the nuns of Buckland abbey. A tenement in Ilchester and a waste plot next to the shire hall were left to his wife Alice, the sole executor, with the request that if it pleased her she would ask her own executors to sell them and distribute the money raised for the good of both their souls. Probate was granted on 16 Jan. 1445.11 PCC 29 Luffenham. Balsham did not mention their son William in his will, but the latter, called William Balsham alias Selborne, figured in the testament Alice made on 7 May 1457 as heir of all her burgages, lands and tenements in Ilchester and Northover. He and a kinsman, a clerk named John Balsham, were to be her executors.12 PCC 9 Stokton. Alice requested William to dispose of her goods for her soul’s welfare ‘as he hopes to please God’, no doubt bearing in mind that in the previous year he had been under sentence of excommunication for contumacy, and that the diocesan Bishop Bekynton had asked the King to order his arrest.13 Reg. Bekynton, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 998.