ILAM, John

According to a near-contemporary list of the town’s officers, Ilam was a baker. Aside from his election to Parliament, only one other certain reference has been traced to him. In Trinity term 1450, shortly before he himself was elected one of the borough’s bailiffs, he was sued for a debt of £20 by the serving bailiffs (here, in confirmation of the list of the town’s officers, he is described as ‘baker’).2 Ibid; C219/15/2; CP40/758, rot. 154d. There is, however, the possibility that he is to be identified with the John Higham, also a baker, who served as bailiff in 1455-6. The phonetic similarity of ‘Ilam’ and ‘Higham’ and their common trade are in favour of this identification, as is the fact that, although none of the town’s MPs are well documented, none are as obscure as ‘Ilam’. Against it is the two terms the baker or bakers served as bailiff, for no other townsman of the period held the office on more than one occasion. On balance the identification is probably to be rejected, but it is sufficiently possible to make the few known facts about Higham’s career worth setting down. His occasional appearances as a plaintiff in the court of common pleas, together with his appointment as tax collector, suggest he was a man of some substance. In 1462, for example, he had an action pending for the taking of his goods worth as much as £30 from Harrington and Arthingworth in the north of the county and Shutlanger in the south. His commercial interests extended beyond baking, for he paid alnage on a small number of cloths in 1465-6 and 1471-3. The most interesting reference to him dates from 1458 when he was sued for maintenance by a glover, Simon Kesteyn, who had been indicted for the murder of John Avoures, Higham’s fellow bailiff of 1455-6.3 CFR, xx. 103, 109; CP40/804, rots. 57d, 277d; E101/343/19; KB27/791, rot. 42d.