FISH, Thomas

A prominent merchant apparently from a family well established at Bristol, Fish held property throughout the town. He also possessed interests in Gloucestershire, where at some unknown date he and his father and namesake acquired a 60-year lease of two messuages and adjoining closes in Marshfield from the abbot of Keynsham. A very obscure figure, the elder Thomas Fish had at least one other son, William. There is nothing else known about the elder Thomas, not least the date of his death, and it is possible that he rather than his son features in the account of the churchwardens of All Saints, Bristol, for 1408-9. This document shows that Thomas Fish paid the parish an annual rent of 2s. p.a. for a property in Skadspyll (now Marsh) Street.5 Topography of Bristol, i (Bristol Rec. Soc. xlviii), 178; Recs. All Saints Bristol, i (Bristol Rec. Soc. xlvi), 51, 58, 65, 67, 73, 75, 83, 176, 178, 179; Gt. Red Bk of Bristol, ii (Bristol Rec. Soc. viii), 302; Bristol Wills, 131, 132-3.

By the same token, it is not absolutely clear which Thomas Fish arbitrated in a quarrel between two fellow burgesses, Richard Alexander and Thomas Young† in 1414,6 CCR, 1413-19, p. 187. exported cloth to Spain in 1415,7 E122/212/13. and obtained a royal pardon in January 1416.8 C67/37, m. 17. It is nevertheless very likely it was the MP, and that it was he too who supplied shipping for the Agincourt campaign,9 It is worth noting that in 1437 the MP purchased a general pardon explicitly allowing any who still held jewels pledged by Henry V for wages of war to keep them if the Crown did not redeem them within the next year: C67/38, mm. 3, 26; PROME, xi. 220-2. and was an executor for William Young of Bristol. In his will of 1417, Young bequeathed to his executor extensive holdings in the town, comprising immediate or reversionary interests in tenements, shops, gardens and other properties at Redcliffe, Wine, Marsh and Worshipful Streets, as well as at the bridge over the Avon, Lewins Mead and other locations.10 Gt. Red Bk. of Bristol, ii. 210. The extent of Young’s generosity raises the possibility that Fish was one of his relatives.

Whether Young’s executor or not, the MP certainly gained in property through his first marriage to Joan Cokkes. In May 1422 his father-in-law James Cokkes, a prominent burgess who had served as mayor of Bristol in 1419-20 (when Fish was one of the bailiffs), chose to assign his holdings in the parish of St. Mary le Port to the couple, in return for an annuity for life of £4 4s. Fish also features prominently in Cokkes’s will, drawn up on 21 Mar. 1423 and proved in September 1426. The testator directed that his son-in-law, whom he named as an overseer of the will, might have half of all his non-bequeathed jewels and plate for the price of 2s. per ounce; that Fish and Joan should inherit a great silver cup after her mother’s death; and that the couple should succeed to various properties in Bristol if her brothers, both named John Cokkes, died without issue. Furthermore, Cokkes asked Fish to advise the indebted elder of the two Johns about satisfying his creditors.11 Bristol RO, Ashton Court mss, AC/D/1/48; St. Mary le Port parish deeds, P/St.MP/D.8, 14; Bristol Wills, 112-14.

Another of Fish’s connexions, and very probably a relative, was John Fisher or Fish of Bristol. The town’s sheriff in 1406-7 and its mayor in 1408-9, John later served as deputy in the port of Bristol to Nicholas Merbury†, chief butler of England. John was a property-owner of some substance at Bristol, holding lands there worth £40 p.a. according to an assessment for the subsidy of 1412. Unless he had a namesake, he was again mayor in 1433-4 and died before September 1435.12 CPR, 1413-16, p. 68; 1416-22, p. 175; 1422-9, p. 223; Feudal Aids, vi. 448; CIMisc. viii. 66; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 30, 50. Whether or not relatives, Fish (or possibly his father) and Fisher were certainly business partners, for it was as such that they and another Bristol merchant, John Droys†, submitted a petition to the first Parliament of 1416. The three men complained that Breton pirates had seized Fisher’s ship, the Christopher of Bristol, while it was sailing from Harfleur to Bordeaux carrying goods of theirs worth 700 marks, and they sought the King’s authority to take reprisals against subjects of the duke of Brittany in order to make good their losses. Parliament submitted the petition to the council, although with what result is unrecorded.13 SC8/23/1150; RP, iv. 89 (cf. PROME, ix. 172). The petition is misdated to the Parl. of 1415 by The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 803, which also erroneously states that the ship belonged to Thomas Fish. A reading of the petition shows that it post-dates that assembly, which dissolved on 12 Nov. 1415, since it refers to the unfortunate crew of the Christopher as having suffered imprisonment at the hands of the pirates from Oct. 1415 to Feb. 1416. Furthermore, it names John Fisher as the vessel’s owner.

Ten years later, Fish and another Bristol merchant, John Alberton, purchased a safe conduct, dated 24 July 1426, for a Spanish vessel, presumably laden with their cargo, to sail to England and then return home. Fish himself was a shipowner and, like other Bristol merchants, he was involved in the lucrative business of taking pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela. In April 1428, the King granted him a licence to use his vessel, a ‘barge’ called the St. John of Bristol, to convey 100 pilgrims to this great Spanish pilgrimage centre, and in the summer of 1430 he used the same vessel to export cloth to Bordeaux.14 Overseas Trade (Bristol Rec. Soc. vii), 59, 61; E122/18/22.

A merchant of Fish’s wealth and status was an obvious candidate for local office and a seat in the Commons. By early 1419, he was a member of Bristol’s common council and later that year he began a term as one of the bailiffs of the town.15 Little Red Bk. i. 138-40. The assumption made here is that he, rather than his father and namesake, was the councillor and bailiff: in this period the town’s MPs almost invariably served as bailiff during their careers. Shortly after he had completed his year as bailiff, he and Robert Russell I* were appointed as collectors of customs there. In November 1421 the two men accounted to the Crown for £22 6s. 7d. spent on building a balinger (a light sea-going vessel), the Marie de Toure, for use on their official duties. This initiative proved comparatively short-lived since by 1427 the Marie lay wrecked, having suffered from several maritime and other ‘accidents’, and afterwards from the depredations of ‘malefactors’ who had taken the opportunity to steal her tackle. In February that year the authorities directed Fish and his fellow customers, Russell and the latter’s successor (perhaps his son) Thomas Russell, to have the remains of the vessel and its apparatus appraised and sold. The subsequent appraisal produced a valuation of 50s., a sum which the three men were directed to send to the Exchequer.16 E122/17/39; E159/203, recorda Easter rot. 5d. In 1426, 1427 and 1431, Fish received nominations for the shrievalty of Bristol,17 CFR, xv. 143, 191; xvi. 61. but he did not gain election to that office until 1434. By the latter date, he had already sat in his first Parliament. Within weeks of completing his term as sheriff, he became one of the constables of the Bristol staple and successfully stood for election to the Commons for a second time.

One of the other nominees to the shrievalty in 1431 was Walter Power*, with whom Fish had sat in the Parliament of that year. Fish had further dealings with Power in the autumn of 1432 when he arbitrated in a quarrel between Walter on the one hand and Philip Russell and John Olyver on the other.18 CPR, 1429-35, p. 222. Fish also served his fellow townsmen as a surety and feoffee. In the summer of 1423 he was a mainpernor for Robert Colville† and Thomas Colyns, who were the executors of John Frere of Bristol and the guardians of Frere’s two sons.19 Little Red Bk. i. 184-5. He was also a feoffee for Roger Levedon* and two other prominent Bristolians, Thomas Wyke and the lawyer Sir John Juyn. It was as such that he was involved in Juyn’s purchase in 1431 of seven messuages and six acres of meadow in Bristol from the executors of Henry Gildeney*. Furthermore, Fish was a party to other transactions concerning Gildeney’s estate, although whether on behalf of Juyn is not clear.20 Ashton Court mss, AC/D/1/47-48, 52, 59, 90a; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 87; CP25(1)/291/65/25; CFR, xvi. 277; CCR, 1429-35, p. 162; E159/211, commissiones Mich.; Bristol RO, St. Thomas the Martyr parish recs., P/St.T/D/138.

In early 1436, Fish received his last known public appointment, a place on an ad hoc commission concerning one of the taxes granted by his second Parliament. Just over a year later, he took the opportunity to sue for the sweeping general pardon announced by the Parliament of 1437.21 C67/38, mm. 3, 26. No doubt he was prompted to do so by the disputes in which he was then embroiled. In Trinity term 1437, a fellow burgess, Thomas Parkhouse, brought two suits against him in the court of King’s bench. First, Parkhouse accused Fish of committing an act of forgery in Yorkshire, in breach of a statute that the Parliament of May 1413 had passed against those who would forge deeds relating to others’ real property. There is nothing else known about this suit but it is possible that Fish had gone to that county in pursuit of his business dealings. In his second suit, Parkhouse alleged that Fish had contravened the statute of 1318 concerning the assize of wine and victuals, by selling goods to the value of £200 during his term as bailiff of Bristol. Again, this action appears not to have reached a conclusion. It is impossible to tell why Parkhouse should have waited for nearly two decades after the expiry of that term to bring it or, indeed, how he had come to fall out with Fish in the first place.22 KB27/705, rots. 9d, 57d; 709, rot. 78d. The Crown also questioned Fish’s conduct in 1437, as one of the former customers of Bristol. On 29 Nov. that year, he and a surety, John Sharp III*, were obliged to bind themselves in £1,000 each to the Crown, on condition that he appeared in the Exchequer in the following Hilary term. When Fish duly appeared there on 3 Feb. 1438, he faced the charge of having omitted from his accounts as customer various consignments of cloth shipped out of Bristol between the beginning of Henry VI’s reign and mid 1423, meaning that the Crown had lost a total of just over £74 in customs revenue. In response, he referred to his recently acquired pardon, dated 7 May 1437, and the Exchequer dismissed him sine die in Easter term 1438.23 E159/214, recogniciones Mich., recorda Hil. rot. 6.

Fish died some three years later, having made a will dated 2 Nov. 1440. Noticeably lacking from this document is a reference to any children, and it would appear that he died without any surviving issue. In the will, Fish requested burial in the cemetery of the parish church of St. Thomas the Martyr at Bristol, by the grave of his first wife Joan. He also left bequests to the same church and its vicar, chaplains and clerks, and to the cathedral at Wells, although providing for his then wife, Agnes, was the will’s main concern. First, she and her heirs were to have a tenement in Wine Street that Robert Herverd, shoemaker, inhabited. Secondly, he left her the lands and tenements in Bristol and its suburbs that he had bought from John Bathe and Robert Nemot, although with the proviso that either she or her executors should dispose of a moiety of these properties to raise money for charitable purposes. As for the other moiety, it was to pass to his brother William Fish after her death. Thirdly, she was to succeed to the remainders of the leases (for 90 years) of a messuage and garden in West Tucker Street and four tenements in Tucker and Temple Streets that the testator had acquired from Witham priory in Somerset. Should she die while those remainders were still in force, William Fish was to succeed to part or all of these interests. Finally, Fish left her the remainder of the lease that he and his father had acquired at Marshfield in Gloucestershire, with remainder to his relative Richard Denys if she died before that lease had expired. Fish also named Agnes as his executor and he appointed a fellow Bristol merchant, John Burton I*, as overseer of the will. Having already received the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities, the will was proved before the mayor and sheriff of Bristol on 10 Jan. 1442. Fish had however died some months before that date, since he was no longer alive when his brother William made his own will on the previous 20 June.24 Bristol Wills, 131, 132-3.

Like the MP, William Fish requested burial in St. Thomas’s cemetery. He left a widow (another Agnes Fish) and three children, two sons and a daughter, who had yet to reach their majorities. He bequeathed the reversions of the lands left to him by his late brother (yet to vest since the MP’s widow was still alive) to his eldest son, another Thomas Fish. In case the latter died without legitimate issue, he also awarded contingent interests in the same properties to his younger son and namesake, to his daughter Joan and to Richard Denys, here described as the testator’s nephew and as the son of the late William Denys of Marshfield. William died before 12 Sept. 1441, when the church authorities approved the will for probate. His heir was his son Thomas, who was active as a burgess of Bristol in the later 1450s.25 Bristol RO, P/St.T/D/311, 313; Temple parish deeds, P.Tem/Aa/32/1.

The MP’s widow was still alive when his overseer, John Burton, made his own will on 21 Mar. 1455. Burton’s will shows that she had remarried John Spicer of Bristol, and that he had bought from her the reversion after her death of properties located throughout Bristol, apparently the moiety that Fish had directed that she might sell. Burton bequeathed that reversionary interest to his feoffees, directing that in due course they should use the lands in question to endow a chantry that he wished to have founded in the parish church of St. Thomas. Agnes also outlived John Spicer, who died in 1456, but she herself had died by 1458-9, when William Neel and his wife began a suit at Westminster against her executors, John Thorp of Berkeley and William Talbot and William Longe of Bristol, for allegedly detaining chattels and muniments from them.26 Bristol Wills, 134-6; PCC 7 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 47v); CPR, 1461-7, p. 414.