LEVING, John

Leving’s origins are not recorded, although it is possible that he was from a family which had long been associated with the parish of Medmenham in Buckinghamshire, where a Richard and Alice Leving were buried in 1412 and 1419 respectively. Leving himself had occasional dealings with Buckinghamshire men, although it is not known whether he himself held property in that county, or whether this was acquired by later generations of his family.2 VCH Bucks, iii. 89; Corp. London RO, hr 177/9; Worcs. Archs., Hampton (Pakington) mss, 705:349/12946/497307. His career is frequently difficult to disentangle from that of his son, another John, who like his father was both a London ironmonger and a merchant of the Calais staple.3 The younger John had married Ellen Sadeler, the da. and h. of a London vintner, by 1435: hr 163/7; London Possessory Assizes (London Rec. Soc. i.), 108, 116.

Leving’s formal identification as an ironmonger, and his close ties with other members of that trade like Richard Marlow† or Nicholas James* (alongside whom he served as one of Marlow’s executors), masked the fact that he spent most of his time dealing in commodities other than those nominally associated with his trade.4 CP25(1)/291/64/97; CP40/647, rot. 115d. Outside the city of London he was frequently known simply as ‘citizen and merchant of London’, a consequence of his activities as an exporter of wool and cloth. His involvement in the export of wool to Calais can be traced back to at least 1417, for in November that year he, along with 14 other Londoners, including Nicholas James, successfully petitioned the Crown for a licence to export, free of further duty, a consignment of wool which had been washed ashore at Ramsgate after four ships bound for Calais had been wrecked.5 E101/189/7, ff. 36-37, 40, 42, 48v; E122/76/34, m. 1d; 203/3, ff. 1, 10v, 11v-12, 21v, 22v-23. The volume of his trading activities was substantial. Between 4 Feb. and 29 May 1426 he exported through Calais more than 150 sacks of wool, amounts only equalled in the ledger compiled by the King’s customer in the port by merchants such as Thomas Mayneld*, Thomas Catworth* and Nicholas James. By contrast, Leving’s exports of cloth were rather less significant. One of his few recorded shipments through the port of London took place in October 1435 and the amount involved does not suggest that this was in any way his main line of business.6 Ms. Archs. Grocers’ Co. ed. Kingdon, 181; C1/45/162.

Others with whom Leving was connected included Hamon Sutton I*, a merchant of Lincoln and of the Calais staple who in March 1431 was bound in £400 to appear before the King in Chancery concerning a debt of £923 14s. 5d. which, it was claimed, was owed by him, Leving and John Hamer to a group of other merchants, including Nicholas James. The dispute had originally been brought before the staple court, suggesting that it arose from transactions involving the export of wool in large quantities.7 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 112-13. Leving’s dealings with alien merchants also appear to have been extensive. At some point in the early 1430s he stood surety in the staple court for Louis Grother, a merchant from Ghent who had been arrested at the suit of another merchant, John Kirton. In November 1435 John Vasques, an esquire of the king of Portugal and factor of both a Portugese and a Flemish merchant, made a general release of all actions and suits in Chancery after certain goods had been seized in the Camber from a ship named Le Seynt Nicholas of Lisbon. Leving was named along with six other London merchants as a part owner of five vessels involved in the affair.8 C47/25/9/27; CCR, 1435-41, p. 33. A few months later, in May 1436, Leving obtained, at a cost of £20, a licence from the Crown which permitted Thomas Morescome, a merchant of Lucca, to ship from any port, free of customs, a large quantity of Spanish wool which had been seized from enemy ships.9 CPR, 1429-36, p. 537.

The success of his business enterprises ensured that Leving was able to build up a substantial portfolio of properties in London and elsewhere which, in 1436, were valued at the impressive sum of £55 p.a. for the purposes of the income tax raised that year.10 S.L. Thrupp, Merchant Class Med. London, 382. In spite of his evident wealth, Leving never became particularly active in civic affairs. He was occasionally appointed as an arbiter in disputes in the City, and, although a member of the common council, was only appointed to a few committees during his career. Unlike most of the other men who represented London in Parliament in this period, he was never chosen as a city auditor. He thus possessed no significant administrative experience when on 12 Mar. 1432 he was elected by the commonalty as one of London’s representatives at the Parliament which was to meet at Westminster two months later.11 Corp. London RO, jnls. 2, f. 31v; 3, ff. 36, 127, 131v, 198; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 139. He went on to attest the two subsequent elections in 1433 and 1435 and probably also that of 1447, but beyond an appointment to hear an appeal against a judgment of the court of admiralty in 1441 he secured no other official appointment either in London or under the Crown.12 CPR, 1441-6, p. 94. This may not have been the result of a lack of ambition on Leving’s part. In July 1442 the city journal noted that a ‘William Levyng’ was the losing candidate for the aldermanry of Baynards Castle ward. No man of this name was prominent in London in this period and it is almost certain that ‘William’ was an error for ‘John’, and that this was the former MP, rather than his son (who, although already a successful merchant, was not a member of the common council at that time).

It may have been Leving’s frustration at failing to secure the desired advancement that saw him drawn into the growing ‘radical’ movement in the capital. Led by Ralph Holland, a tailor alderman whose candidacy for the mayoralty had been rejected on three occasions, this movement developed from a jurisdictional dispute between the Tailors and Drapers into a wider debate about the level of participation in civic elections. On 21 Sept. 1443 the re-election of the chamberlain, John Chichele, was thrown into confusion when a large crowd of citizens clamoured for the election instead of William Cottesbroke*, who, like Leving, was a prominent merchant on the common council. During the next three weeks preparations were underway for an armed rising in London which would focus on the election of the mayor on 13 Oct., and in evidence subsequently provided by John Sturgeon* it appeared that Leving had been among the ringleaders. In the event, the radicals were thwarted, putting an end to any hopes the ironmonger might have had of further advancement.13 For these events see C.M. Barron, ‘Ralph Holland and the London Radicals’, in The Med. English Town ed. Holt and Rosser, 165-91; London jnls. 3, f. 142; 4, f. 10.

Like other wealthy merchants Leving was drawn upon by the Crown as a source of finance. In May 1436 he made a personal loan of £20, a sum which was swiftly made the subject of an order authorizing repayment through assignment.14 E401/747, m. 7. By the late 1440s, however, the political and financial circumstances of the Crown had changed dramatically, and the merchants of the Calais staple were among those to whom the Crown turned for financial help in its struggle both to pay its other debts and to maintain its hold over its French possessions. Repayment of the staplers’ hefty loans was often slow in coming, and relations with Henry VI’s government were made worse by the Crown’s practice of granting licences to favoured royal servants and others enabling them to bypass the staple when exporting wool, thus eroding the staplers’ monopoly. In the event, however, the timing of Leving’s death, which had evidently occurred by November 1448, means that it was almost certainly his son rather than he who was among those staplers who had lent sums totalling £10,700 to the Crown by October 1449. The younger John subsequently petitioned Chancery claiming that an alderman, Robert Horne, had not handed over the money owing to him which had been collected by assignment on customs revenues.15 C1/22/178.

Little else is recorded of Leving. He probably died in late 1447 or early the next year, and in November 1448 John Lodge of Henley in Oxfordshire, one of his executors, made a release in Chancery to a London draper in respect of all actions and suits arising from Leving’s will. The ironmonger’s widow survived him until about 1454.16 E210/4422; CCR, 1447-54, p. 102.