HULL, John

John Hull was born, probably in the latter years of Richard II’s reign, as son to a prominent Exeter citizen. The family’s standing was considerable, and by the 1430s allowed for the marriage of John’s sister Margaret to the prominent lawyer Henry Fortescue†, a former chief justice of Ireland.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 108 wrongly identifies Margaret as a da. of Nicholas Fallapit. Her parentage is proven by KB27/742, rot. 78d. John nevertheless followed his father Henry into trade, and like him established himself in the city of Exeter. It is not known under whose tutelage he served his apprenticeship, if any, and in 1413 he was admitted to the freedom of Exeter by right of succession.6 Exeter Freemen, 41. His father was still alive, and, indeed, lived on until about 1425, when he last served as a member of the city’s council of 12.7 Mayor’s ct. roll 3-4 Hen. VI, rot. 1d. Hull’s will was proved in the mayor’s ct. on 4 Feb. 1426: ibid., 4-5 Hen. VI, rot. 19d. Henry, who owned a number of houses in Cooks’ Row in the Exeter parish of St. George, opposite the gate called ‘Lytelstyle’, as well as a house and garden in ‘Gennestrete’, and holdings in the parish of St. Michael Heavitree,8 CP25(1)/46/89/253. had further augmented his property by a marriage to the daughter of another local merchant, John Talbot. In his lifetime, Talbot had settled properties in St. Leonard and Topsham on the couple,9 CP40/699, rot. 673. and the death of his son and heir, Richard, in the mid 1420s allowed the remainder of the Talbots’ property, including a large building incorporating a shop, two solars and a cellar in the High Street of Exeter, to descend to Henry Hull’s children.10 Mayor’s ct. roll 4-5 Hen. VI, rot. 36. The exact date of Richard Talbot’s death has not been established. He was said to have been alive on 14 Sept. 1426, but is not heard of thereafter: CP40/699, rot. 673.

This descent, however, sparked a protracted dispute between John Hull and his two sisters, then the wives of John Lange alias Smyth and John Warde. Relations between Hull and his sisters had evidently been strained even before their father’s death, for in early 1424 the justices of common pleas heard that John and Elizabeth Hull had assaulted and wounded Margaret Warde,11 CP40/652, rot. 90. while an agreement between Hull and John Lange over access rights through a certain gate in Waterbeer Street, concluded in the summer of 1426, had broken down by that autumn, when Lange had failed to construct the gate.12 Mayor’s ct. roll 5-6 Hen. VI, rot. 18. For much of the latter year, the Hulls, Wardes and Langes were squabbling over the Talbot inheritance in the mayor’s court, and before long their disagreement grew violent: in early 1427 Hull accused Lange of having entered his house on the previous 16 Nov. armed with a basilard, which he had used to assault Hull’s wife.13 Ibid. 4-5 Hen. VI, rots. 36, 36a; 5-6 Hen. VI, rot. 17d. As late as the autumn of 1435 Hull was reduced to suing his Exeter neighbour Robert Wilford, executor of the chaplain Walter Smale, one of his father’s executors, for return of a chest of muniments relating to the Talbot inheritance,14 CP40/699, rot. 673. and in the following year he accused one Thomas Creyston, clerk, of unlawfully keeping other deeds relating to the settlement on the Langes of eight acres of land in the parish of St. Leonard, which he claimed to have entrusted to Creyston in 1430.15 CP40/703, rot. 316d.

Even in his father’s lifetime, John embarked on the cursus of civic office-holding common for a member of Exeter’s merchant elite. He first ranked among the men electing the mayor, council and senior city officers at Michaelmas 1416, and a year later stood surety for Exeter’s MPs alongside his father at the parliamentary elections of 1417.16 Mayor’s ct. roll 4-5 Hen. V, rot. 1d; C219/12/2. In 1418 he was himself elected to office as one of the city’s stewards, and over the course of a career spanning more than 40 years he served a term as receiver and held no fewer than four mayoralties between 1427 and 1446, in the intervening years putting his experience at his neighbours’ disposal as a member of the city council. While serving as receiver in October 1423, and in April 1432, not long after relinquishing his second mayoralty, Hull attended the Devon county elections at the ruined castle within the city walls, and set his seal to the sheriff’s indenture. Three years later, he himself was returned to the Commons by his neighbours.17 C219/13/2, 14/3.

Despite this seemingly distinguished career, Hull’s conduct in office was on more than one occasion subject to challenge. Thus, in about 1434 the husbands of the two heirs of Joan Roos alias Stapeldon, Thomas Gille and William Kayl, claimed that Hull had connived with John Colle and Joan Grilles in drawing up and enrolling in the mayor’s court a false will, by virtue whereof he had gained control of Joan Roos’s property in Exeter.18 C1/38/291; KB27/702, rot. 76d. On another occasion in the mid 1430s Hull was assisting the mayor of the day in the arrest of one Giles Haddon. According to one version of events, Hull drew his sword and would have killed Haddon, sitting at his supper, if he had not drawn his dagger and deflected the stroke, but according to the testimony of Benedict Wychals, a leading Exeter citizen, only Haddon had drawn his sword. Similarly, it is unclear what credence may be given to claims that during the subsequent search of Haddon’s house by Hull and his men Haddon had been deprived of a piece of silver and a maser.19 C4/6/56. In the course of his third mayoralty, Hull was accused before the justices of King’s bench by Maud, widow of the influential Sir Hugh Courtenay† of Haccombe, of having wrongfully seized a quantity of her grain and imprisoned one of her servants. Such was the influence of even the cadet branches of the Courtenay family, that Maud, who claimed the substantial sum of £200 in damages, was almost immediately able to procure royal orders for Hull’s distraint and for the arrest of the city serjeants, who were said to have assisted him in his supposedly high-handed action.20 KB27/714, rot. 111d; 729, rots. 18d, 38d. Similarly, in the spring of 1448 the justices of common pleas heard how two years earlier Hull, then serving in his final term as mayor, had arrested Thomas Bernhous for assaulting one John Tope in the High Street of Exeter, and committed him to prison until he found surety of the peace. Bernhous for his part claimed that his imprisonment had been unlawful, and demanded £200 in compensation for the two days that it had lasted.21 CP40/749, rot. 129; 752, rot. 123d; 758, rot. 139d; Letters and Pprs. Shillingford (Cam. Soc. n.s. ii), 39.

Hull’s commercial dealings were evidently extensive, but few details of the commodities in which he traded have been discovered. They did, however, include salt, a substantial quantity of which he sold to Nicholas Tyrant in the autumn of 1428.22 Hull’s and Tyrant’s accounts of the transaction differed somewhat. Whereas Tyrant claimed to have bought 50 quarters of salt from Hull at a bulk price of £20, Hull asserted that Tyrant had agreed to pay him 44d. per quarter for 300 quarters (a total of £55), if he were able to deliver it to Northam before 24 June 1429, failing which the bargain was to be void: CP40/683, rot. 335. His mercantile contacts not only included Exeter neighbours like John Rydon, John Wolf, and the tailor John Garnesey,23 CP40/716, rot. 258; 720, rot. 33d. but also merchants from further afield like the Taunton traders Thomas Rokes I* and John Hyde, and the Crukerne dyer John Smert.24 CP40/748, rot. 361; 749, rot. 361; 755, rot. 51. At least part of Hull’s trade was conducted through the port of Kingswear near Dartmouth, rather than Exeter (or nearby Topsham), and it was there that in about 1430 some of his goods were arrested by three Dartmouth merchants, including Thomas Asshenden*.25 KB27/670, rot. 24d; 675, rot. 45; 680, rot. 40. The previous year Hull had been charged by another Dartmouth merchant, John Gayncote*, with a trespass, the details of which are now obscure,26 KB27/675, rot. 44d; 679, rot. 27. but it seems likely that a royal commission issued in May 1431 for the arrest of a group of south-western merchants and mariners including Hull was related to instances of piracy, rather than these more minor matters.27 KB27/679, rot. 27; CPR, 1429-36, p. 133. Certainly, he was implicated in an act of piracy that was brought to the attention of the Commons in 1433, when the Portuguese merchant John de Port presented a petition complaining that although he had lawfully paid custom on a cargo of salt, oil, hides and other merchandise worth some £400 which he had brought to Dartmouth by sea, on 12 Aug. that year Hull and two other Exeter merchants, as well as William Attwyll*, the searcher in the port, and the deputy butler, John More II*, had boarded his ship with a band of armed followers and had cut the vessel’s sail from the yardarm, before raiding the cellars where de Port’s goods were stored and carrying off his property. In October, when the Portuguese had ridden to London to seek redress in Chancery, Hull and his associates had intercepted him at Honiton and dragged him off to Exeter, where they had placed him in strong irons. De Port succeeded in regaining his liberty by procuring a writ of corpus cum causa, but subsequent attempts to gain redress against Hull and his associates had proved abortive. Although the chancellor issued writs of sub poena summoning Hull and his fellows into Chancery, attempts to have these writs served on them failed, as the Exeter men simply informed the messengers seeking to deliver the documents that any attempt to do so might prove fatal to the bearer. Although the Lords and Commons agreed that the sheriff of Devon should be instructed to summon Hull and the rest to appear in court by public proclamation, this measure appears to have been no more effective than previous attempts to bring the miscreants to justice. In September 1434 royal commissioners were ordered to investigate any injuries done to de Port, but it was not until June 1435 that the Crown ordered the mayor of Exeter, William Cook, and a royal serjeant at arms to place Hull and his fellows under arrest and to produce them in Chancery. It is uncertain whether Cook ever attempted to execute this commission, but it appears that both More and Hull jumped at the opportunity to gain immunity presented by the parliamentary writs issued just over a month later.28 C1/9/177; SC8/135/6718; KB27/691, rot. 73; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 469, 474.

From the 1440s, Hull apparently began to invest some of his commercial gains in the acquisition of further property, such as the remainder of a lease of two tenements and two gardens in Exeter, which he purchased from the local esquire John Holland in September 1447, a transaction which subsequently led to prolonged litigation over the purchase price.29 CP40/760, rot. 191d; 779, rot. 327d; 826, rot. 33d. Little else is know of Hull’s later life. In the summer of 1455 he was being sued by John Cullyford, the master of the Exeter hospital of St. John the Baptist, over a bond for £10, but Hull maintained that he had sealed the document under duress, while being held prisoner by the master and his accomplices at Axmouth in November 1449.30 CP40/778, rot. 327. At Easter 1456, the Exeter city attorney in his turn brought litigation in the court of common pleas over a debt of 100s., which he claimed Hull owed him.31 CP40/781, rot. 13. It is not clear whether these events were in any way related to a curious hiatus in Hull’s civic career about the same time. Although he regularly ranked among the men electing Exeter’s mayor and senior officers until Michaelmas 1453, and served on the council as a member of the first 12 until the following autumn, he was then omitted, only to return as a member of the 24 at Michaelmas 1458. He was once more dropped from the council either in 1459 or the following year,32 Mayors’ ct. rolls, 9 Hen. V-38 Hen. VI. The roll for 1459-60 is lost. but evidently lived until at least 1466-7, the year when he last received the livery of bread and ale customarily granted to former mayors by the citizens of Exeter.33 Exeter receiver’s acct. 6-7 Edw. IV. The acct. for 1467-8 is lost.

Hull married twice. The parentage of his first wife, Elizabeth, the mother of his son and heir, is obscure, but for his second wife he apparently chose a member of the St. Cleer family of Ashburton. This second match produced a further two children, a son, whom he named after himself, and a daughter Eleanor, who went on to marry one Thomas Boteler.34 Vivian, 492. Hull’s son and heir, Henry, who had been admitted to the freedom of Exeter in 1439,35 Exeter Freemen, 49. in time to serve as the city’s representative in that year’s Parliament, married an heiress and thereby entered the ranks of the prominent Somerset gentry. He died in 1490, and was survived by his only daughter and heir for barely a year. On her death, the Hull properties passed to John’s younger son and namesake, said to be 40 at the time, and it was his son and heir who went on to represent Exeter in Parliament in 1539 and 1547.36 The Commons 1509-58, ii. 407.