JACOB, William

It is clear from the record of his litigation in the court of common pleas that Jacob was engaged in trade in west Sussex by 1442. Among the pleas he brought in the 1440s were suits against two notaries of Thorney for a debt of £7 16s. 8d., a butcher from Arundel for £3, and the widow of William Warnecamp* of Arundel for £17.5 CP40/724, rot. 82d; 738, rot. 13d; 779, rot. 458; 780, rot. 236. His participation in the affairs of the civic community of Chichester began towards the end of the decade with his election as one of the two ‘reeves’, and in 1451 he began to be involved in the running of the local staple, initially as a constable and later, for perhaps as long as 26 years without break, as its mayor. While constable of the staple on 26 Feb. 1453 he attested the Chichester election to the Parliament of that year, and may, therefore, be identified with the namesake, called ‘constable of Shoreham’, responsible for making the return for the borough of New Shoreham two days later.6 C219/16/2.

Jacob’s standing in Chichester was undoubtedly enhanced by his second marriage, to Joan, the widow of a former mayor of the staple, John Fust, who had died in 1451. The match had taken place by the autumn of 1455, when he and Joan recovered a debt of £17 owed to her former husband by a local merchant, and in the same law term they were also suing other of Fust’s debtors from elsewhere in Sussex.7 CP40/779, rots. 118, 168, 458d; 780, rot. 236. Fust had been survived by a son, Nicholas, but after the latter died childless his cousin, another John Fust†, asserted that he should inherit the property John senior had held in East Wittering and Yapton. Jacob contested the claim. The matter came before the chancellor in 1458, when testimony about Fust’s last requests was given both in Chancery and before commissioners sent to Chichester. Most witnesses agreed that the dying man had wanted his widow and her heirs to keep the disputed property, and had expressed his determination that none of it should pass to his brother’s line. It fell to a different chancellor, Bishop Neville, to resolve the quarrel early in 1461. In part at least judgement was in Jacob’s favour: on 28 Feb. feoffees named by the deceased (Fust’s brother-in-law the rector of St. Pancras church, Humphrey Heuster* and Master John Vincent) conveyed to our MP and his wife certain lands, rents and services in Yapton. These Jacob retained until November 1470 when he transferred them to John Stanney†, a local lawyer who was then in the process of buying up other properties belonging to the Fust family.8 C1/28/503-8; Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxxix. 162; Suss. N. and Q. viii. 74.

In the meantime, as mayor of the city Jacob had presided over the Chichester elections to Parliament on 16 Nov. 1459, and a year later, still officiating as mayor, he witnessed the indenture for the shire election held in the county court at Chichester on 28 Aug. 1460, before returning himself as MP for the city by an indenture dated 22 Sept. He did, however, relinquish office before the Parliament met on 7 Oct.9 C219/16/2. While up at Westminster he not only pushed ahead with his Chancery suit regarding the Fust estate, but also started another in the common pleas against a Guildford man, for debt. Although Jacob did not absent himself from the Commons in order to present his plea, his fellow MP for Chichester, Humphrey Heuster, represented him in the court in person. Nor did Jacob appear before the judges when sued in the same law term by another Member of the Lower House, Thomas Combe*, an esquire then sitting for Arundel. Combe’s action was for a breach of the statute of York which Jacob had allegedly committed during his mayoralty of Chichester. He accused Jacob of transgressing against the statute by trading in victuals up to the value of £40 on his own account.10 CP40/799, rots. 74d, 291d. Perhaps the pardon which Jacob took out on 11 Oct. 1462, in which he was described as ‘of Chichester merchant alias vintner’, had something to do with the case.11 C67/45, m. 10. More trouble threatened in November 1464. The deputy to the chief butler, John Wenlock*, now Lord Wenlock, testified in the Exchequer that in defiance of royal proclamation a tun of Gascon wine unloaded at Portsmouth in the previous May had come into Jacob’s possession at Chichester on 17 June. Jacob came before the barons in person, to assert that the matter was insufficient in law, whereupon the sheriff of Sussex was instructed to empanel a jury to declare the truth. No jury appeared in successive law terms until the summer of 1466, when the sheriff returned an indenture whereby a local panel had valued the wine at 26s. 8d. Jacob was fined the cost of holding the inquisition.12 E159/241, recorda Mich. rot. 21. Jacob again attested the Sussex elections to Parliament in April 1467, when mayor of Chichester once more, and he likewise witnessed the parliamentary returns for the city on 25 Sept. 1472 (although on that occasion no office is mentioned in the indenture). When he was sent to the Commons for the second time, in 1478, he was again listed among those participating in the election of the knights of the shire.13 C219/16/2, 5, 6; 17/2, 3.

As mayor of the staple of Chichester Jacob could opportunistically further his own interests. In his staple court in February 1472 a Salisbury woolmonger, Thomas Lambevale, undertook to pay him £20 for a consignment of wool. When he failed to pay on the due date the mayor procured a writ to the sheriff of Wiltshire, which eventually resulted in Lambevale’s imprisonment at Salisbury in April 1475, although as he was found to have no lands or chattels which might be confiscated his creditor may have remained unsatisfied.14 C241/254/176; C131/77/26. Jacob died while in office as mayor of the city and staple, on or just before 30 Oct. 1479.15 C267/6/27. His will, dated four days earlier, was proved on 15 Nov. Jacob intended his funeral to be suitably fitting for one occupying the highest of civic offices. Requesting burial before the ‘vision of St. Gregory’ (an image of Christ) in the sub-deanery of the cathedral, he stipulated that the dean and every canon present at his funeral should each receive 1s., while the ‘morrow masse preste’ and the schoolmaster of the grammar school were each to have 6d. if they offered prayers for him, and every one of the vicars choral 2s. for saying the ‘David sawter’ for him and his two former wives. Six wax torches weighing 12 lb were to burn round his body, the six poor men holding them each being supplied with a white gown and hood. A bequest of £2 to ‘my curate the sub dean’ indicates that he lived in the sub-dean’s parish. Jacob left the sum of £4 for repairs to the ‘grete organe’ in the cathedral, and also remembered the brotherhood of St. George, the merchants’ guild which worshipped there. For the sake of his soul he requested that 1,000 masses be said within a month of his death. Jacob died childless. He left the house where he lived in South Street to his executors John Stanney and Robert More† (who had served together under him as constables at the staple), to hold in trust for his widow, Anne, who was permitted to continue living there so long as she remained single. After she remarried or died it was to be sold for at least £50, to provide annual salaries of ten marks each for two priests to pray in the sub-deanery for the testator and the souls of his parents and all three of his wives, for as long as the money lasted. Anne might dispose of his household goods however she liked, and keep plate to the value of £40. His two executors were each left £4, two female servants 53s. 4d. and £2, respectively, for their marriages, and six men received Jacob’s gowns, lavishly lined with fur.16 PCC 12 Logge.