ISMELL, Robert

Like many of the men of Devizes, Ismell earned his living as a cloth-maker and merchant. He clearly fulfilled the statutory requirement for residence within the borough that he represented, inhabiting a tenement in the town belonging to the church of St. John.1 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Wilts. deeds, 212B/2279. Few details of his commercial connexions have been discovered, but it is probable that the debt that Agnes Dyer, apparently the widow of a dyer from Hungerford in Berkshire, was seeking to recover from him in the summer of 1435 arose from a business transaction.2 CP40/698, rot. 219. By contrast it is not possible to be certain about the background to some of the other litigation in which Ismell became involved: in the summer of 1445 he and Thomas Coventre II* were jointly suing one Thomas Lyon for the sum of £8, while Robert alone was also seeking to recover a similar sum from a blacksmith from Calne.3 CP40/738, rot. 82. Rather different in scale, albeit no less obscure, was the dispute which in the early months of 1448 saw Ismell sued by the wealthy London grocer Thomas Canynges* and his associate, the esquire John Bluet, for a debt of £100.4 CP40/748, rot. 159.

Unquestionably, Ismell was well connected among the burgesses of Devizes. In 1434, when a dispute between him and the executors of William Walshot was put to arbitration, he was able to name two of the leading men in the borough, John Coventre III* and Robert Chandler*, as arbiters for his part.5 CCR, 1429-35, p. 302; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 514. The loss of the Devizes borough records makes it impossible to be sure about Ismell’s career (if any) in local administration, but by 1445 he cut enough of a figure in the wider mercantile community of Wiltshire to be selected as collector of a parliamentary tax. He thus possessed at least some administrative experience when late in the following year he was selected to sit in the Commons, but it is nevertheless not clear what persuaded him to undertake the journey to Bury St. Edmunds. Nothing is known of Ismell’s contributions to the deliberations of the Lower House, and there was ostensibly nothing in the known proceedings of the Parliament that might have been of particular interest to a Wiltshire clothier, unless it were the bill in favour of Queen Margaret, since Devizes traditionally formed part of the endowment of the King’s consort.

Few details of Ismell’s later career have been discovered, and it may be assumed that he returned quietly to pursue his trade in Wiltshire. Early in 1453 he was, however, subject to a legal demand for the sum of £5 brought by the executors of the former Wiltshire escheator Richard Milborne*.6 CP40/768, rot. 208d.