IHAM, John

This MP’s family may have derived its name from the Sussex vill of Iham near Winchelsea, although his origins and place of residence remain obscure. He was evidently living somewhere in the rape of Hastings by 1443, when he sued a local man on a deed of covenant,1 Lathe Ct. Rolls, Rape of Hastings (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxxvii), 96. and his feoffeeship of the manor of Catsfield from October 1446 links him with the same part of Sussex. As a feoffee he was associated with such prominent figures in the locality as Sir Thomas Lewknor* and his stepson Thomas Hoo II*; and Catsfield subsequently passed to one of the county’s leading lawyers, Bartholomew Bolney*.2 Bolney Bk. (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxiii), 81. Possibly, like Hoo and Bolney, he too was trained in the law, but unlike them he never achieved much distinction.

It was perhaps his connexion with Hoo which led to Iham’s election for Horsham to the Parliament which assembled at Bury St. Edmunds on 10 Feb. following, for Hoo, returned at the same time as a knight of the shire, had become an influential figure in the town. Another of their co-feoffees, John Faukes, a master in Chancery and dean of the chapel in Hastings castle, may have assisted the two newcomers from Sussex to learn parliamentary procedure on their initial entry to the Commons, for his experience recommended his promotion as clerk of the Parliaments shortly afterwards. When Iham was next recorded, in the spring of 1455, it was again in association with Hoo, only this time he was clearly acting on the more experienced lawyer’s instructions, for their dealings with the Sussex manor of Codyng formed part of the complicated negotiations then under way between Hoo and the London mercer Geoffrey Boleyn*, to satisfy Boleyn, who was married to one of Hoo’s nieces, that he would receive all that was due to him from the estate of her recently-deceased father, Thomas Hoo I*, Lord Hoo.3 CAD, i. C240; ii. C2709; C147/116. Iham was still living in June 1457,4 Bolney Bk. 81. but whether he was the John ‘Hiham’ who received an annual fee of 56s. 8d. from Battle abbey in 1478-9 cannot now be established.5 SC6/1878, m. 8. There is no evidence to identify him with John Higham esquire, who was granted for life the office of chief remembrancer of the exchequer of Ire. in 1462, for good service to Edw. IV and his father the duke of York: CPR, 1461-7, p. 76.