COPULL, John

This MP was perhaps not a ‘typical’ burgess, given that he appears not to have held any borough office at Huntingdon, although he did attest the town’s return to the Parliament of 1442. Possibly, he was the ‘John Couphall’ who served as clerk of the peace in Huntingdonshire in the period 1422-7.1 E. Stephens, Clerks of Counties, 105.

Although the return for the Huntingdon election of 1445 has not survived, a lawsuit which came to pleading in the court of common pleas four years later shows that John Culham* and Copull were the burgesses elected. The plaintiff, William Rede of Waresley, sued Thomas Gilmyn for taking a horse in October 1447. In reality, Gilmyn had distrained the animal in his capacity as under sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, while trying to collect what the latter county owed in wages to Robert Stonham* and Everard Digby*, its knights of the shire in the Parliament of 1445. Besides referring to Stonham and Digby, the plea roll also happens to record the names of the burgesses for Huntingdon in the same assembly.2 CP40/752, rot. 340. Copull and Culham were already associates upon entering Parliament. In 1440, Copull had acted as a feoffee when Culham obtained a manor at Abbots Ripton, Huntingdonshire,3 CP25(1)/94/36/28. and in April the following year the two men stood as mainpernors for Roger Hunt* when he acquired the keeping of the castle and honour of Huntingdon from the Crown.4 CFR, xvii. 194.

By the early 1440s, Copull had a link with John, Lord Tiptoft†, with whom he was associated in an episode apparently connected with that peer’s feud with Sir James Butler (son of the earl of Ormond). On 22 Feb. 1441, a jury indicted Henry Brokesby, a tenant of Butler’s manor of Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire, of murder before Sir Nicholas Styuecle* and other j.p.s. According to the jury, Brokesby had killed one John Paxton at Hilton in Huntingdonshire in March the previous year, but Brokesby immediately claimed that the indictment had arisen from a conspiracy at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, among Tipftoft and his coterie, including Copull. Duly acquitted before a special commission of gaol delivery on 6 Apr. 1441, Brokesby subsequently sued Tiptoft and his followers in the common pleas, leading to pleadings in that court in Michaelmas term 1442. The plea roll refers to Copull as a ‘yeoman’ and reveals that he had a surname alias of ‘Maryoun’. As it happened, Tiptoft’s death in the following January undermined the chance of a successful defence and, in the following summer, Brokesby won damages totalling no less than 1,300 marks. This was not however the end of the matter, for the justices reserved judgement while they debated various issues of law arising from the case. There followed numerous adjournments, and it is possible that Brokesby never achieved the justice he sought, since he was still awaiting judgement in 1449.5 CP40/727, rot. 600; KB27/730, rot 141; Year Bks. Hil. 21 Hen. VI (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679), pl. 12; Mich. 22 Hen. VI (ibid.), pl. 5.