HAMBURY, John

On occasion, Hambury was assessed for local subsidies in Winchester, so there can be no doubt that he resided in the city. He probably lived in Tanner Street, although the only property he is known to have held was a garden on the west side of Gar Street, which he took over from James Solas* in about 1437.1 D.J. Keene, Surv. Winchester (Winchester Studies, 2), ii. nos. 462, 678. Keene states (i. 437n) that Hambury was exceptional among the MPs for Winchester in not being recorded in possession of property in the city, but evidently did not identify him under the other spellings of his name: ii. 1259. A member of the weavers’ guild, he had madder and woad carted to Winchester from Southampton, for the cloth-finishing process, but little else is recorded about his trading concerns.2 Brokage Bk. 1439-40 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1941), 72; 1443-4, ii (Soton. Rec. Ser. vi), 297. Similarly poorly documented is his participation in the government of Winchester, but as he was delegated to travel to Westminster to present the new mayor, Stephen Gede, to the barons of the Exchequer on 27 Sept. 1440, it is likely that he was then holding one of the lesser civic offices.3 E368/213, adhuc. Mich. rot. 1. In convocation on 7 Feb. 1446 he was exempted from the offices of master or steward of the weavers’ guild, although he was still required to pay his share of the fee farm due to the Crown, and 4d. to the guild for a light dedicated to the Virgin Mary.4 Black Bk. Winchester ed. Bird, 82. This implies there were other urgent calls on his time. He contributed 5s. towards the wages of the representatives of the Parliament of 1445-6, then still in session, and was himself elected to the Parliament summoned to meet at Bury St. Edmunds in the following year. He and his colleague, John Parys*, were together paid £4 2s. 8d. for their wages for 23 days spent away from home, that is at the usual daily rate of 2s.5 Hants RO, Winchester recs., W/E1/18; E4/4.

Hambury is not recorded again in Winchester, and he was no longer paying rent for the garden in Gar Street in 1450. He seems to have moved to Southampton, where by 1454 a John Hambury was living in a house in the Fish Market, which, along with the cottage next door and a cellar with a stone superstructure nearby in Blue Anchor Lane, was leased from Beaulieu abbey. From 1456 to 1462 or later that John Hambury also paid 2s. p.a. rent to the town authorities for a garden at ‘Pylgrym ys pytte’.6 Keene, ii. no. 678; Southampton Terrier 1454 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xv), nos. 379, 384-5; Southampton City Archs., steward’s bk. SC5/1/8.