BURTON, Seman

Perhaps the son of the Seman Burton who purchased the freedom of Hull in 1418-19,5 It is assumed that the Seman Burton ‘senior’ appointed an auditor of the Hull chamberlains’ account in September 1430 was his putative father: chamberlains’ accts. 1430-1, BRF 2/352. Burton was a merchant who, like many of the leading burgesses of the town, engaged in overseas trade. In January 1434, for example, he and Robert Carre of London were licensed to ship 200 quarters of Yorkshire wheat from Hull to Gascony,6 E159/210, recorda Hil. rots. 1, 4d. and in September 1448 a jury alleged that he and Thomas Hagg of Hull had attempted to smuggle 14 sacks of wool and 3,500 fells from Yorkshire to Zeeland in January 1443.7 E159/227, recorda Mich. rot. 15. He may also have counted another merchant, Robert Kirkton*, among his business associates. At the very least, they were friends or kinsmen: in his will of 1445, Kirkton left a gift of clothing to Burton and directed that he should receive 13s. 4d. from every pound arising from sales of property his widow should make.8 York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, ff. 104v-5.

Burton’s trading connexions in Hull made him a natural choice to host foreign merchants in accordance with an Act of the Parliament of 1439, a duty he performed in 1440 and 1441.9 H. Bradley, Views of Hosts of Alien Merchants, pp. xxxi, xxxii, xxxv, liii, 140-3; E101/128/31. He was also a merchant of the Calais staple, in which capacity he, Nicholas Ellis*, John Spencer I* and others received a pardon of all offences in June 1449.10 CPR, 1446-52, p. 256. Given his continued involvement in overseas trade and his responsibilities at Hull, it is unlikely that he was the Seman Burton who served as first controller and then collector of customs in Great Yarmouth from 1442 to 1449.11 CPR, 1441-6, p. 21; CFR, xvii. 235; xviii. 51, 99; E403/781, m. 6. During the 1450s and 1460s, the focus of Burton’s trading interests appears to have shifted from wool to wine. In 1453 he exported 14 tuns in three separate consignments and in the same year a London vintner, William Sherman, received a pardon for his outlawry for failing to answer him at law over a debt of £17. In 1461 Burton shipped wine and lead to the Low Countries, and in March 1463 the corporation of Hull paid him £4 for wine supplied to John Neville, Lord Montagu, when that peer visited the town.12 Customs Accts. Hull, 1453-90 (Yorks. Arch. Rec. Ser. cxliv), 7-9, 29, 34; bench bk. 3a, BRB 1, f. 85v; CPR, 1452-61, p. 11.

Burton enjoyed an office-holding career spanning over four decades. He was elected to his first known office, that of chamberlain in 1435, and he became one of the bailiffs three years later. He was of sufficient standing to be named among the first aldermen of the newly constituted town and county of Kingston-upon-Hull in May 1440, and in the following decade he served terms as mayor and coroner. Again coroner in 1473-4, Burton was also frequently an auditor of the chamberlains’ accounts throughout his career in municipal administration. He was first put forward for election to the Commons on 27 Jan. 1449, but on that occasion the commonalty chose the mayor, Hugh Clitheroe*, and the lawyer, John Killingholme*, to represent it at Westminster. However, on 3 Nov. that year he was again among the candidates named by the mayor and aldermen and this time he was duly elected by the commonalty.13 Bench bk. 3a, BRB 1, ff. 4, 7d. His time in Parliament was not his only encounter with national events. In late 1460, for example, he was among those who contributed towards the cost of an iron chain strung across the harbour to protect the town from invasion. Following Edward IV’s seizure of the throne and defeat of the Lancastrians at the battle of Towton, however, the municipal authorities were obliged to perform a rapid volte-face. In May 1461 Burton was among the aldermen who agreed to pay for the cost of wine sent to the new King, and in the same year and again in 1463 he contributed towards the cost of sending men to the north to meet the threat posed by Lancastrian rebels.14 Ibid. ff. 74v, 76v, 82. Late in Edward’s reign or perhaps in that of Richard III, Burton was commissioner of the admiralty court at Hull. A Chancery bill reveals that he held the office, although not the dates and length of his tenure; one authority posits a date of ‘about 1480’ for the bill, which was certainly submitted to the chancellor in either 1475-80 or 1483-5. The plaintiff was the master of a Prussian vessel, the Christofer of Danske, Gregory Bauymere, who complained that Burton had permitted two English merchants, Thomas Salman of Boston and Clement Sewettes, to sue him in the admiralty court, in contravention of the treaty that the English Crown had made with the Hanseatic League at Utrecht in 1474.15 C1/59/302; VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), i. 53.

Burton appears to have survived until 1484, since in September that year John Dalton† filled the vacancy among the aldermanic ranks caused by his death.16 Bench bk. 3a, BRB 1, ff. 126v, 136v. It is not known whether he had married or was survived by any children and there is only limited evidence for his property at Hull. In 1440 he owned a tenement in Whitefriar Gate and eight years later a large building in Lowgate. By the mid 1460s he was leasing a capital messuage (later the Cloth Hall) in High Street from the corporation for an annual rent of 53s.17 R. Horrox, Changing Plan of Hull 1290-1650, nos. 14, 194.