KIRKBY, John III

Kirkby, the most obscure of the MPs for Southampton in this period,1 He is not to be confused with John, s. and h. of John Kirkby† (d.1424) – the Hants MP of 1420– an esquire who died in 1469: C140/31/12. was the only one never, so far as is known, to have occupied any of the major borough offices. By November 1409 he or a namesake held a plot of land on the east side of French Street, and by May 1431 he had acquired a tenement on the west side of English Street, in the parish of Holy Rood, where he seems to have lived.2 Black Bk. i (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1912), 114; Southampton City Archs., Soton. recs., SC4/2/262; Cart. God’s House, ii (Soton. Rec. Ser. xx), 366. He traded in wine, albeit not in large quantities (his largest recorded consignment was ten tuns), and one of his shipments, in December 1426, was recorded as belonging to his un-named wife. Other of his imports included madder and iron, but his exports were more notable: in 1447-8 he shipped from the port at Southampton no fewer than 105 whole cloths. Also dealing in chalk and timber, in 1428-9 he leased from the town authorities a small house next to the wall of God’s House for storing the former commodity and an empty plot of land to stockpile the latter. He supplied lime and chalk for works on the walls at the Watergate five years later. Kirkby’s inland trade saw him dispatching barrels of herring and garlic to Andover, salmon to Winchester and salt to Salisbury and Shaftesbury.3 E122/184/3, pt. 3, ff. 4v, 5v; 141/21, f. 5, 29, ff. 3-5v, 20, 21, 27, 36, 52, 57; Port Bk. 1435-6 (Soton. Rec. Ser. vii), 14, 30; Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (ibid. xxxvi), 111, 164, 196; Stewards’ Bks. 1428-34 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1935), 6, 62, 136; Soton. recs., SC5/4/1 ff. 47, 50, 51, 58v, 59v.

Kirkby was one of the collectors of dues payable to the borough from his parish in 1435, and in the same year he stood surety for the attendance in Parliament of John Payn I*.4 Stewards’ Bks. 1434-9 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1939), 52; C219/14/5. This served as the preamble to his own successful candidacy at the election to the succeeding Parliament, summoned to assemble in January 1437. On the following 25 May, after the dissolution, he provided securities of £20 in Chancery as a guarantee that Richard Weston, a London stockfishmonger who had undertaken to sail to Iceland with goods belonging to the new bishop of Holar, would do nothing in contravention of the statute of 1429-30 which restricted trade with the subjects of the king of Denmark to the staple at Bergen.5 CPR, 1436-41, p. 58. Possibly he owned the vessel which Weston was planning to freight. By 1447 our MP had been joined in his commercial ventures by John Kirkby ‘junior’, perhaps his son, who also traded in wine (which he supplied to tradesmen in Guildford, Farnham, Alton and Salisbury), cloth and wool.6 Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9, pp. 48, 101, 103, 105, 140, 166. It was the younger man who after being party to the parliamentary electoral indenture at Southampton on 10 Feb. 1449 died at some point before 8 July that same year, when a vessel called Le Spynasshe, of which he had been part owner, was arrested by a royal serjeant-at-arms.7 C219/15/6; CPR, 1446-52, p. 271. John junior’s widow and executrix, Agnes, was sued in the court of common pleas by Thomas White, the litigious Southampton merchant, for her failure to satisfy an obligation for £28 3s. 5d.8 CP40/757, rot. 213d. She and her new husband, Robert Belhouse, claimed in a petition to Chancery that Kirkby had fulfilled the conditions of the bond: C1/18/119. Kirkby the former MP stood surety for the attendance of Nicholas Holmehegge* at the Parliament of 1450, and was still living in 1454, dwelling in one of the cottages attached to The Crown.9 C219/16/1; Southampton Terrier 1454 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xv), no. 107.