COMBE, John

According to the assessments for taxation made in 1412, the MP’s father Robert Combe, esquire, was possessed of lands in Wiltshire, at Amesbury, Tidworth and Compton besides Enford, worth as much as £20 p.a.2 Feudal Aids, vi. 539. He died some four years later, leaving his son and heir still under age and a ward of Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, from whom he held land by knight service. On 20 Feb. 1416 the earl granted John’s wardship and marriage to four custodians, John Ingram, Hugh Bailey, William Sampson and Thomas Davy, who in the course of Michaelmas term 1422 took legal action against one William Odam of North Tidworth over a debt of £40 owing to the young man’s estate.3 Jervoise mss, 44M69/C/528; CP40/647, rot. 92d. There is no evidence that he was the John Combe who having lost his hearing and sight after being beaten in a quarrel when playing at ball ‘with great clubs’ at Quidhampton, was cured when he offered a wax model of his head and shoulders at the tomb of Bp. Osmond of Salisbury. As one of the miracles at Osmond’s tomb recorded in 1424, it provided evidence for the bp.’s canonization: Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxii. 235. On coming of age, at some point before 1425, John took possession of family property in West Amesbury and Tidworth.4 Feudal Aids, v. 240-1; CIPM, xxiii. 283. His dealings with his feudal overlord are poorly documented, and whether he ever served under Earl Thomas’s command in France has not been discovered. Eleven years after the earl’s death at Orléans in 1428 his executors sued Combe for the sum of £8.5 CP40/715, rot. 18. The name of Combe’s wife has not been traced, but as she was a coheiress with the wife of John Erneley* of the Wiltshire manor of Winterbourne Basset (held of the barony of Castle Combe), she was probably a member of the Best family and related to the Malwyns of Etchilhampton. Combe was to name Erneley among the feoffees of his paternal inheritance at Compton.6 Wilts. Arch. Mag. ii. 270-1; Jervoise mss, 44M69/C/533.

To judge from the lawsuits in which he became engaged, Combe’s principal interests lay in sheep-farming, the production of wool and the manufacture of cloth. In 1425 he sued a weaver from Homyngton for trespass, and in 1431 he accused Nicholas Salman and two others of stealing 200 of his ewes at Great Amesbury. However, the defendants in the latter case asserted that they had been acting as deputies for the collectors of the subsidies granted in the Parliament of 1429-30, and that as Combe had failed to pay the 11s. 2½d. he owed for his contribution to the fifteenth due at Hilary 1430 they had taken 14 ewes as a distraint. Combe disputed the assessment. His appointment later that year as a collector of the second fifteenth granted by the Parliament placed him in the same onerous position endured by Salman and the rest. Later on he alleged that a Salisbury tanner had stolen from him six cartloads of ‘ryndes’ (bark) – used for dyeing – at Whiteparish, and in 1441 he claimed that another Salisbury man had made off with his flock of 300 sheep grazing at Amesbury.7 KB27/655, rot. 64d; 693, rot. 62; CP40/680, rots. 119, 119d; 721, rot. 173d. He was twice more named as a tax collector in Wiltshire in the 1430s, and in the same decade he attested the parliamentary elections for the county three times.

Combe’s own first election to Parliament, in 1433, was as a burgess for Marlborough, several miles north of his home. The Parliament prescribed that leading gentry and townsmen throughout the realm should take an oath not to maintain anyone who broke the peace. Naturally, Combe was among those listed by the shire knights to take the oath in Wiltshire the following spring.8 CPR, 1429-36, p. 371. He served as a juror at inquisitions post mortem conducted at Amesbury in 1434, one of them regarding the local estates of Joan, dowager duchess of York.9 C139/62/3, 66/43. Combe entered the Commons a second time in 1437, on that occasion as a representative for Ludgershall, situated not far from his property at Tidworth. Unusually, he was appointed as a collector of the subsidy granted in the Parliament, whereas MPs were generally excused such service when they themselves had been party to the grant.

Pleas brought against Combe in the common bench over the next few years were primarily for debt, but, more seriously, in 1442 John Norris*, the esquire for the King’s body, claimed that he and two ‘baillys’ had failed to render account as receivers of his money in Wiltshire. It seems likely that Combe had been allotted this task during Norris’s shrievalty of 1440-1.10 CP40/715, rots. 18, 620; 724, rot. 247. Similarly, the suit brought against him in 1446 for a debt of £2 owing to John Basket* may have related to payments due to Basket as sheriff in the previous year.11 CP40/740, rot. 451. Combe again represented Marlborough in the Parliament which met at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447. By that date he appears to have established links with the baronial family of Hungerford, for he served on the jury at the inquisition post mortem held at Devizes on 11 Sept. 1449 following the death of Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford,12 C139/135/30. and it was later alleged that in a suit for trespass heard shortly afterwards, on 4 Oct., brought by Hungerford’s grandson, Robert, Lord Moleyns, against Reynold Croke of Hazelbury, he and his fellow jurors had accepted substantial bribes from Thomas Tropenell* to find in Moleyns’s favour.13 CP40/756, rots. 370, 370d. Yet whether such an association played any part in Combe’s elections to Parliament cannot now be established.

In the late 1440s Combe fell out with the rector of North Tidworth, concerning the latter’s right to tenancy of certain of his lands in the vicinity. The dispute came for judgement before Archbishop Stafford. The feoffees Combe entrusted with his property at Compton in 1448 included besides Erneley three other sometime MPs (albeit none of whom are known to have sat in the same Parliaments as him), all members of the legal profession: Philip Leweston*, John Benger* and Robert Onewyn II*.14 Jervoise mss, 44M69/C/533, 783. His final return was to the Parliament summoned for 6 Nov. 1450 and dissolved in the following May. It may be that he died while it was in progress. The Wiltshire subsidy returns for the tax on incomes from land, granted in the previous Parliament and assessed in early 1451, recorded that John Combe’s income was £16 p.a. but also that Joan, widow of John Combe, held land worth £10. Our MP is not recorded subsequently.15 E179/196/118.

Certain of Combe’s properties in Southrop, Gloucestershire, and Inglesham, Berkshire, came by unexplained means to one Thomas Rodyll of Amesbury, who disposed of them in 1470,16 CCR, 1476-85, no. 1180. but a suit in Chancery shows that his more important holdings at East and West Amesbury, North Tidworth, Compton and Devizes passed in the 1450s to Richard Combe, the eldest of his three sons. Soon after coming into his inheritance Richard enfeoffed Henry Long* and others to perform his will, which was that they would hand the estate over to his brother John when he came of age, and if John died without issue it should pass in tail to another brother, Robert, with remainder to their sister Joan. Meanwhile, the profits of the estate were to be used for the youngsters’ education. Nevertheless, the feoffees allegedly wasted the inheritance, or so John alleged in a petition to Bishop Waynflete as chancellor, after he came of age in 1460.17 C1/26/453, 686/10. His wardship, along with that of the youngest brother, had been granted to Richard’s executors in January that year by Dr. John Morton, chancellor to Prince Edward,18 Jervoise mss, 44M69/C/535. to whom the recently forfeited estates of the earldom of Salisbury had been assigned.