GRANTHAM, William

Grantham may have been a descendant of John Grantham, who was assessed at a modest 6d. to the parliamentary tenth levied in Leicester in 1354, and of William Grantham, admitted to the town’s merchant gild in the 1360s.1 Leicester Bor. Recs. ed. Bateson, ii. 98, 137. From the mid 1420s, he regularly brought pleas of debt in the court of common pleas, mostly arising out of his trade as a draper or hosier.2 In 1447 he was styled William Hosyer alias Grantham of Leicester, draper: CP40/746, rot. 382. Early in his career these were almost always for 40s., the minimum sum claimable in that court, and against tradesmen and husbandmen of Leicester and its environs, but as his career progressed and his business as a draper no doubt expanded the sums claimed rose together with the social status of the defendants.3 e.g. CP40/655, rot. 47d; 678, rot. 204d; 684, rot. 221. In Hilary term 1439, for example, he had pleas pending against a Lancashire esquire, Laurence Standish of Standish, for a debt of over £10, and against the Leicestershire knight, Sir Robert Woodford and his mother, Mabel, for 16 marks each.4 CP40/712, rot. 7. Far more interesting, however, is a writ he sued against a more important man, Sir Richard Hastings*. He claimed that this powerful knight had, on 20 May 1435, imprisoned him at Newton Harcourt, a few miles to the south-east of Leicester, and taken his crops and household goods to the value of £20. Both parties appeared in court in person in the following Trinity term with Hastings claiming our MP as his villein appurtenant to the manor of Newton Harcourt. On 21 July a jury which included some of the leading townsmen of Leicester, namely Thomas Charite*, John Loughborough* and Adam Racy*, found in the plaintiff’s favour before the justices of assize and awarded him costs and damages worth £5. Hastings then sued a writ of attaint against the jurors with the original verdict being confirmed before the justices of assize on 23 Feb. 1436.5 Leics. Village Notes. ed. Farnham, iii. 263; CP40/699, rot. 301. As with other similar cases, this was very likely a collusive suit designed to register the plaintiff’s free status in a court of record, with the attaint being no more than a ploy to secure a second verdict in his favour. On 5 Oct. 1433 Grantham himself had sat on a jury at Leicester which had found in favour of Thomas Charite in a similar action.6 CP40/692, rot. 106. Such cases are difficult to interpret but it is more likely that both men had found themselves compromised by purchasing land held by villein tenure rather than that they themselves were of unfree birth.

Grantham’s frequent appearance in the legal records suggest that he was one of the more substantial of the town’s burgesses, and his office-holding career confirms this. After serving as one of the bailiffs in 1431-2, he went on to hold office both as mayor and as one of the four stewards of the fair. While holding the latter office, he was, on 16 Oct. 1449, elected to represent the borough in Parliament with his fellow steward, Adam Racy.7 HMC Hastings, i. 64; DL29/212/3252; Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 448, 453; C219/15/7. His prominence is also reflected in the frequency with which he was employed in important capacities for his neighbours. Suits in the court of common pleas in the 1430s and 1440s show that he acted as an executor for the Leicester clerk, William Repington, for the Leicestershire esquire, Richard Danet of Bromkinsthorpe on the outskirts of the town, the husband of Maud, daughter of John Pykwell*, a Leicester wool merchant, and for a lesser man, the Leicester pardoner, William Barton.8 CP40/699, rot. 615; 738, rot. 494; 746, rot. 382. In November 1443, along with Richard Neel*, Adam Racy and William Pacy*, he was a feoffee of Thomas Gaddesby, a saddler of the town, and in August 1445, again in company with Racy, of a Coventry glover, Richard Knitteford, in property in the parish of St. Leonard, Leicester.9 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 421-2.

It is likely that Grantham did not long survive his only recorded appearance in Parliament, the last session of which met in his home town and ended in early June 1450. The last reference to him occurs in the following month: on 20 July he witnessed a charter for William Wymondeswold*, with whom he had served as bailiff nearly 20 years before.10 Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, 350-1. He was certainly dead by Trinity term 1458 when another leading Leicester burgess, Ralph Fisher alias Furnes*, was litigating as his executor. There is no direct evidence that he left issue, although Edward Grantham†, a colleague of the Leicestershire lawyer Thomas Kebell† in the Inner Temple, may have been his son or, more probably, grandson.11 CP40/790, rot. 365; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 771-2.