HORE, William II

A namesake of the MP was listed among the citizens of Salisbury in 1399, and, described as ‘senior’, attended a civic assembly in 1406; while the same person or another William Hore, a tucker, was among the local men killed in August 1415 on Fisherton bridge by ill-disciplined soldiers from Lancashire in the retinue of Sir James Haryngton†.9 First General Entry Bk. nos. 54, 138, 151. Their relationship (if any) to our William is not known.

Whatever his origins, Hore became one of the most prominent merchants of Salisbury. Described variously as a mercer or grocer,10 C67/39, m. 31. he imported considerable quantities of goods at Southampton, bringing them to the city by road. In 1439-40 several wagon-loads of woad, alum, madder, black soap and wine arrived in Salisbury for Hore to sell there; and carts driven to the city in 1443-4 were laden with two hogsheads, 16 pipes and three butts of wine, as well as almonds, oil, and 24 barrels of tar. Again, his principal imports that year were madder, alum and woad (as many as 57 bales),11 Brokage Bk. 1439-40 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1941), 59, 62, 65, 111, 147, 165; Brokage Bk. 1443-4 (Soton. Rec. Ser. iv, vi), passim; Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (ibid. xxxvi), 99, 131, 140, 172, 210-11. demonstrating that for him the supply of materials for the cloth industry formed a major part of his trading interests. The suits Hore brought in the court of common pleas against his debtors show the range of his commercial activities and the scale of his transactions, with defendants coming from Devon as well as the counties neighbouring Wiltshire, and the sums due to him amounting on occasion to as much as £40.12 CP40/715, rots. 66d, 190d, 211d, 279; 721, rot. 172d; 724, rots. 148d, 352; CPR, 1452-61, p. 373. An active litigant, he also sued on bonds under statute merchant, entered in the staple court at Salisbury.13 C241/236/19, 20. In 1452 he and John Aport of Salisbury appealed against a judgement in the court of admiralty, claiming that as the admiral’s lieutenant had, wrongly, asserted the cause to be maritime they had been pronounced contumacious unjustly.14 CPR, 1446-52, p. 564. On occasion Hore might be the transgressor: the Sussex merchant John Wryther* brought a plea against him and Thomas Freeman* of Salisbury for a debt of 20 marks.15 CP40/759, rot. 54.

Throughout his career Hore was actively engaged in the administration of Salisbury. In the course of more than 33 years from December 1434 (when he appears to already have been promoted as a member of the council of 24), he attended many meetings of the citizens’ convocation.16 First General Entry Bk. nos. 300-58, passim; ledger bk. 2, ff. 3-82v. Although on 2 Nov. 1437 he paid £4 to be excused the offices of alderman and reeve,17 First General Entry Bk. nos. 333, 341. he was prepared to take on the duties of a constable, an assessor for the collection of parliamentary subsidies (doing so in 1437, 1438, 1440 and 1445), and a steward to oversee works on the city’s defences.18 Ibid. nos. 334, 340, 352, 355, 362, 400. A regular donor of money towards the cost of such works, he also contributed to the loans made by the city to the Crown, and the increasing size of his donations, rising from 6s. 8d. in 1437 to £1 6s. 8d. in 1454, is a reflection of his growing prosperity.19 Ibid. nos. 319, 321C, 345C, 350, 360A, 364; ledger bk. 2, ff. 3v, 10.

Following the election of Salisbury’s MPs to the Parliament of 1442, Hore stood surety at the county court at Wilton for one of them, his occasional trading partner Thomas Freeman.20 C219/15/2. During his mayoral year of 1443-4, he was allowed 17s. 2d. for his ‘work and good will’ with regard to excavating the city’s ‘great ditch’. More importantly, it was agreed in the civic assembly on 6 June 1444 that he, his brethren and their counsel should ride to see the city’s lord, Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury (presumably then attending on the King), to discuss the so-called ‘revival’ of the city’s liberties as regards the bridges, the mill, ale tasters, brewing and other matters in contention, the committee being authorized to give the bishop a present of silver should he grant their requests.21 First General Entry Bk. nos. 387, 389, 393. Significantly, in the following year (1444-5) Hore was paid £2 for his efforts to secure changes to the city’s royal charter.22 Salisbury acct. rolls, G23/1/44, no. 1. These were probably undertaken while he was representing Salisbury in the Parliament which assembled on 25 Feb. 1445 and eventually concluded in April 1446. A writ ordered payment to him and his companion Richard Hayne II* for 202 days’ service in the Commons, amounting to as much as £40 8s. Whether they ever received this substantial sum is not recorded, but it is hardly surprising that when elections were held for the next Parliament, in 1447, Salisbury’s representatives were prevailed upon to serve for half the normal wages.23 First General Entry Bk. no. 403. While up at Westminster Hore had pursued his own interests in the law courts, and on 25 June 1446, shortly after the dissolution, he took the precaution of purchasing a royal pardon.24 CP40/738, rot. 181; C67/39, m. 31. He was at Westminster again on the business of the city in November 1448, then receiving on Salisbury’s behalf an assignment at the Exchequer replacing a bad tally issued some 18 months earlier.25 E403/773, m. 4.

Hore regularly participated in the elections of Salisbury’s representatives conducted in the convocation, doing so for the Parliaments of November 1449, 1455, 1460, 1461, February 1463 (which never met) and the following April. Furthermore, he was present for his own elections in 1453 and 1459.26 First General Entry Bk. no. 434; ledger bk. 2, ff. 4, 12, 38, 41, 51v, 59v, 64. For the former Parliament the writ from Chancery instructed payment to him of 2s. a day for 163 days’ service.27 Ledger bk. 2, f. 8. Membership of the council of 24 involved taking on such additional duties as a keeper of the peace, as an auditor and as an arbiter of disputes between his fellows – for instance to bring to an end the vituperative quarrels between the mayor William Swayn* and the councillors Edmund Penston* and Richard Hayne. He was named in April 1456 as an assessor for levying the expenses of the MPs in the previous Parliament; in June 1457 he was among those assigned to supervise the running of George’s Inn; and in September that year he helped raise money for the wages of 60 men sent to Southampton to help defend the port.28 Ibid. ff. 9v, 13v, 18v, 27v, 28; First General Entry Bk. no. 438.

As an experienced negotiator, in the late 1450s Hore became further involved in the continuing disputes between the citizens and the bishop of Salisbury, Aiscough’s successor Richard Beauchamp. The convocation optimistically sent the mayor and four citizens, including him, to London in June 1459 to reach an agreement with Beauchamp, and on their return Hore joined the body of 12 (six each from the 24 and the 48), assigned to examine the evidences and inform the convocation about any outstanding differences between city and lord.29 Ledger bk. 2, ff. 36v, 37. There is nothing to show where Hore stood politically during the civil war, although as a Member of the Coventry Parliament of November that year he no doubt brought Salisbury news of the proscription of the Yorkist lords following their defeat by the royal army at Ludford Bridge. The tables had turned by the autumn of 1460, after the Yorkists triumphed at Northampton, and at the close of that year Hore’s son William headed the contingent of 128 men sent from Salisbury to support their forces. In the following March, after Edward IV had taken the throne, Hore helped the authorities to organize Salisbury’s defences,30 Ibid. ff. 41, 44, 50. and during the absence of the mayor John Wyse† he acted as his deputy. Five months later he was one of the assessors for a gift to be given to the new King on his visit to the city, towards which he and William junior each contributed £1.31 Ibid. ff. 49v, 52v, 61.

In September 1462 Hore accompanied William Swayn to London, taking with them a formal reply from convocation to a letter from Bishop Beauchamp regarding the continuing negotiations between them; their fellow citizens allowed them 26s. 8d. to cover their expenses. A group of 22 citizens were selected in the summer of 1464 to wait on the bishop to discuss their on-going differences, with Hore once more among them, and in October 1465 he was one of a smaller delegation of eight given authority to represent the city’s standpoint to Edward IV, and in particular to explain its failure to remove from the mayoralty John Hall II*, perceived by the King to be the principal trouble-maker.32 Ibid. ff. 56v, 70, 77. The first half of the 1460s saw Hore busy as an assessor for the wages of soldiers sent from Salisbury to the north of England in support of the King’s military campaigns, and in 1466 he contributed £1 towards the present of £20 given to the queen on her entry to the city.33 Ibid. ff. 58v, 65v, 70v, 79v.

Besides his assiduous service to his home city generally, Hore had been entrusted with other tasks on behalf of individual citizens. As a young man he had been made executor of John Guy of Salisbury, a responsibility which caused him considerable trouble in the law-courts.34 C67/38, m. 21; CP40/708, rot. 95d. In 1439 Guy’s widow Isabel alleged in a petition to the chancellor that Hore had ‘embezzled’ her late husband’s true will, and had forged another testament in which Guy had not only bequeathed five messuages to him and his heirs, but had also instructed him and Isabel to sell his other properties, whereas in reality Guy had left her all his holdings including goods to the value of £100. The forged will was proved in the court of Arches in London, beyond the ‘knoulech of them that hadde any interesse of the true testament made at Sarum’, while a priest who had written down the true will deceitfully approved the false one at Salisbury.35 C1/9/119-20. Despite these allegations, Hore was subsequently asked to be an executor for William Waryn† (d.c.1441), five times mayor of Salisbury, being associated in this task with Henry Man*. The two of them were sued in Hilary term 1442 by Robert Colpays* of Winchester for wrongful detention of a pyx containing charters and other muniments.36 CP40/724, rot. 247.

Another suit brought against Hore in Chancery concerned his trading activities. In the autumn of 1460 Nicholas Henry, a scholar at Oxford university, recounted how his brother-in-law Piers Gylmyn, a merchant from Guernsey, had been bound to Hore in £8 13s. 4d. as the purchase price of certain merchandise. Gylmyn had since died, as had his widow (Henry’s sister), who had named their mother as her executrix. The latter paid Hore’s attorney £5 in full satisfaction of the debt, but Hore, wanting more, had arrested the scholar at Salisbury on his way to Oxford, and when he was called into court he had no one to stand by him because the 19 men he had found to ‘do his law’ had been persuaded by Hore’s son William to reach an amicable accord. Accordingly, he was condemned and kept long in prison. Hore found a Guernsey esquire, Thomas de la Court, to stand surety on his behalf.37 C1/29/512; CCR, 1454-61, p. 476.

Little is known about Hore’s property holdings, which included land in Wiltshire assessed in 1451 for the purposes of taxation at £6 p.a.38 E179/196/118. By 1455 he had acquired from William Warwick* a large house opposite the market in Salisbury, as well as other buildings, although he had previously sold some cottages in St. Martin’s Street.39 Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 79, 84. Nor is much known about his family, save that for a long time his son William was at his side as a member of the city councils, having been elected one of the 48 in November 1455,40 Ledger bk. 2, ff. 15v, 31, 36v. and sworn to the 24 four years later in 1459. Just three days after Hore stood pledge for his son’s payment of £4 to be excused the offices of alderman and reeve, William junior participated in his father’s final election to Parliament.41 Ibid. f. 38. A grocer by trade, William junior was also engaged in cloth-production, and the gardens of the house he owned in St. Edmund Street contained racks for drying cloth.42 Ibid. f. 8v; CP40/800, rot. 159d. The younger man extended his interests beyond Salisbury by marrying Christine, a daughter of John Wallop† of Farley, Hampshire.43 Hants RO, Reg. Waynflete, 21M65/A1/13, pt. 1, f. 80*.

The date of our MP’s death is not known. He is last recorded attending a civic assembly in September 1467, and in the following January, with his son’s agreement, he conveyed to John Hall and his wife Joan the messuage and shops opposite the market which he had acquired from William Warwick.44 Ledger bk. 2, f. 82v; Salisbury Domesday bk. 3, G23/1/215, f. 12. At a later date William junior was expelled from the 24, only to gain re-admittance in November 1470, for ‘diverse considerations’.45 Ledger bk. 2, f. 98. Whether these reflected on wider political concerns is unknown. When Margaret of Anjou and the duke of Somerset landed in England in April 1471 and raised an army to reinforce the Readeption of Henry VI and the claims to the throne of her son Prince Edward, Salisbury was almost in their line of march. The citizens paid Hore junior to ride to the duke at Glastonbury with their excuses for failing to supply soldiers in their support. It was presumably he rather than our MP who as ‘William Hore of Salisbury, merchant, alias esquire’, sued out a pardon from the restored Edward IV on 18 Dec.46 Benson and Hatcher, 178; C67/48, m. 25.