JUSTICER, John

A weaver, Justicer was probably a descendant of Michael ‘Justiler’ of Henton, Oxfordshire, who bought a messuage and other property in Wycombe from John Stacy in the late 1360s.2 CAD, ii. C2073. It is not certain that the MP was the John ‘Juster’ of Oxon. who quarrelled with Nicholas Blisworth of the same county in the early 15th century, or that he was related to a contemporary named Michael Justicer of Henley-upon-Thames. Michael was a servant and feoffee of Isabel Prior of Shiplake and her sons from Henry V’s reign, or earlier, until the 1430s. It is also impossible to prove that the MP was the ‘John Justicere’ who stood surety in the ct. of KB for William Balderby in the autumn of 1412. A churchwarden at Hitcham, situated just south of Wycombe, Balderby had appealed Nicholas Burne, a prisoner in the Marshalsea, for stealing a chalice, service books, vestments and other items from the parish church there: CCR, 1399-1402, pp. 407, 471, 586; DL25/1648; E210/5568, 6052, 6169; Sel. Cases King’s Bench (Sel. Soc. lxxxviii), 207-8. He himself possessed links with Oxfordshire in general and Henton, a hamlet of Chinnor situated just a few miles north-west of Wycombe, in particular. Peter Sprenge of Thame entrusted all his goods and chattels to him and another burgess of Wycombe in September 1424, and he took a bond of £40 from John Pecche, a husbandman from Henton, 12 years later.3 CAD, ii. C2062; vi. C6076. Just weeks after entering this security, Pecche was party to a settlement of a messuage and other lands at Chinnor, Henton and Wainhill on Justicer and his heirs.4 CP25(1)/141/27/72. Shortly before his death, Justicer would convey what appear to have been the same holdings to a fellow Wycombe burgess, John Welsbourne I*, whom he had already chosen to oversee his will.5 CAD, vi. C5012; CH1 T/14.

Notwithstanding the purchase made by his putative ancestor, Michael Justiler, in the 1360s, it is possible that Justicer was not a native of Wycombe and that he had moved to the town, a centre for cloth production, to practise his trade. Whatever the case, he was certainly firmly established there before the end of Henry V’s reign. In September 1420 he witnessed the grant of a rent emanating from one of Wycombe’s inns, and in the following summer a Welshman, John Griffin of Cardigan, began a three-year apprenticeship under him.6 Centre for Bucks. Studies, CH1 T/5/4; CAD, vi. C5018. Whether by virtue of the properties formerly held by Michael Justiler, other holdings or both, Justicer was a tenant of Bassetbury, the duchy of Lancaster manor that encompassed most of the borough. Although belonging to the duchy, this lordship was part of the dower estates of Henry V’s widow, Queen Katherine, to whose steward, Sir Walter Beauchamp†, Justicer swore fealty at a tourn of March 1423.7 St. George’s Chapel Windsor, recs., XV.15.1, m. 35. By the autumn of 1427, Justicer’s fellow burgesses held him in sufficient regard to return him to Parliament. It is likely that he held office within the borough, but the loss of most of Wycombe’s medieval records makes this impossible to prove.

Justicer survived for some nine years after the dissolution of the Parliament of 1427. In his last will and testament, dated 20 Feb. 1432 and proved on 18 Apr. 1437, he asked to be buried in the churchyard of the parish church of All Saints in Wycombe, beside the tomb of Thomas Sprot, one of its former vicars. He left his son Thomas a tenement in the town’s High Street, a property situated next to another of his tenements in the same street. If Thomas should die without heirs, it was to pass to his second son Richard, with a like remainder to his daughter Matilda. If it came into Matilda’s possession and she died without surviving heirs as well, it was to go to the churchwardens of All Saints, to dispose of for the benefit of the church’s fabric. Justicer provided for his wife Margery by awarding her possession of the tenement in which they lived for life, after which it was to pass to Thomas and his heirs, with the same remainders as before. He also left Margery a tenement lying next to the inn called Le George, for as long as she remained sole after his death: if she remarried, she was to surrender it to Matilda and her heirs. Finally, Justicer left the residue of his estate to Margery, whom he named as his executor, and appointed two overseers, the previously mentioned John Welsbourne and Thomas Durem. The chief beneficiary of his testament was All Saints church to which he donated nearly 20s., for repairs to its fabric, for the purchase of a silver chrismatory, for a new lamp in the choir and for the upkeep of its existing lights.8 CH1 T/14; Bucks. Recs. ix. 12-13. In February 1438 Durem issued letters of attorney authorizing the conveyance to Thomas Justicer of the tenement left to him in the will.9 C146/911.