JOP, Nicholas

There is some confusion over the descent of the Jop family in the fifteenth century, at least in part resulting from their practice (in line with common Cornish usage) of sometimes substituting the name of their main residence of Bokelly for their surname. No definite evidence of Nicholas Jop’s parentage has been discovered, but it seems unlikely that he was a direct descendant of the man of the same name who had represented Bodmin in Parliament in March 1416, for that Nicholas†, who was brutally murdered on the royal road near Launceston in the small hours of 25 Jan. 1432, left as his heir a son called John. The latter was still a minor in 1438. Nor did the younger Nicholas join the dead man’s widow, Joan, in her appeal of the murderers.3 KB9/938/158; KB27/687, rot. 52; 688, rot. 12d; 690, rex rot. 7d; CP40/710, rot. 493d. The biography in The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 501, does not record the murder, or the name of Jop’s son and second wife, Joan, a da. of Richard Budde of Bodmin: CP40/705, rot. 280d. Equally inconclusive is the evidence of a deed by which the elder Nicholas settled landholdings in ‘Tregorthyan’ on feoffees, including a Nicholas Jop.4 JUST1/1540, rot. 76d.

The extent of the family estates is uncertain, but it was probably our Nicholas who in 1428 was the tenant of property at Lamellin and Colquite.5 Feudal Aids, i. 230, 231. Other Jop holdings (held from the Arundells of Lanherne) lay in the parish of St. Laurence in Bodmin, and although it is uncertain whether the MP ever resided there, this house was probably deemed sufficient to qualify him for election to Parliament for the borough in 1449.6 Cornish Lands of the Arundells (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. n.s. xli), 58. It is not clear in what way he distinguished himself in the Commons, but that he did so may be inferred from the significant preferment he received in the months after the dissolution. By Michaelmas that year he had entered the King’s household as a yeoman of the chamber, and he was later to be made a yeoman of the Crown and styled one of the King’s serjeants. In the first instance, however, the Crown wished to draw upon his services in the locality, and in December he was appointed escheator of Cornwall. Little else is known of his career. It is likely that for most of the 1450s his duties in the royal household kept him busy about the King’s person, and in recognition of his office as a yeoman of the Crown he was granted daily wages of 6d. in October 1452.7 E101/410/3, f. 32; 410/6, f. 41; 410/9, f. 44; CPR, 1452-61, p. 20. He was once more elected to Parliament in 1453, this time representing the duchy of Cornwall borough of Lostwithiel alongside the Warwickshire lawyer Edward Deraunt*. It is probable that he owed his return to his position in the Household. Nevertheless, his career was destined to be brief: when the King fell ill in 1454, his household was reduced in size, and Jop was not among those kept on, nor does he appear to have been reappointed after the King recovered.8 PPC, vi. 224.

Even before this misfortune he had come into conflict with Isabel, wife of Thomas Cheddar, and one of the four daughters of Robert Scobehulle of Scobehulle in Devon. The details of their dispute, which concerned lands at ‘Trevysquyte’, and which dated back to at least 1449, are uncertain, but the justices of common pleas eventually found in favour of Isabel, and condemned Jop to pay substantial damages of £84.9 CP40/769, rot. 425d; 779, rot. 302. The combined effect of this judgement and of the loss of his position at court may have caused Jop serious financial difficulties. The day before the household ordinances that spelled out his dismissal from the King’s service were enacted, Richard Joynour*, the former controller of the mint, appeared in the Exchequer of pleas to claim from him payment of a bond for £16, dating from July 1451. Once again, the King’s justices found against Jop, and in October 1455, when Joynour complained to the court that his opponent had failed to pay, he was committed to the Fleet prison. It took a month before Jop was able to secure a writ of error by virtue of which the matter was put to the adjudication of the chancellor and treasurer in Exchequer chamber.10 E13/145B, rot. 3; E159/231, brevia Mich. rot. 12d. Yet, this was not the end of his troubles. Hardly had he regained his liberty, when he was once more arrested as the result of a fresh plea of debt for the sum of seven marks brought by a former fellow member of the royal household, William Tailboys* of South Kyme, in the London sheriffs’ court. Only in March 1456 did Jop procure the writ of corpus cum causa that provided for his release from the sheriffs’ counter.11 C244/80/136.

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that Jop subsequently disappears from the records. He may have withdrawn to his native Cornwall, where he is last recorded in 1464 in a rental of the great Arundells of Lanherne.