LOUTH, John

John was the one of four sons of Robert Louth, a successful mercer, who had been admitted to the freedom of York in 1386. Robert served as chamberlain in 1387-8 and as sheriff in 1389-90, and by 1396 he was described as one of the ‘probi homines’ of the city. He traded extensively with the Hanseatic towns, being one of the leading exporters of cloth from Kingston-upon-Hull during the 1380s and 90s. His trading ventures were not without their difficulties: in 1385 and again three years later, his goods were impounded in Prussia. Robert died in 1407, leaving a wife Joan (who outlived him by some 20 years). He had clearly prospered through trade and his testamentary bequests totalled some £482.3 J. Kermode, ‘Merchants of York, Hull and Beverley’ (Sheffield Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1990), app. 4.

John was probably the eldest of Robert’s sons and the only one to be named in his will. He was almost certainly the only one of age and he was admitted to the freedom of the city by patrimony in the year of his father’s death.4 Freemen of York (Surtees Soc. xcvi), 110. However, relatively little is known of his career, beyond his tenure of public office. He embarked on the customary cursus honorum in February 1414, when he was elected one of the chamberlains of York, but thereafter remained restricted to minor activities as a member of local juries and a pledge in the mayor’s court until he was elected sheriff in the autumn of 1424.5 York Memoranda Bk. ii. 56-62. In this official capacity he was named, in November, to a commission to investigate whether the Scrope of Masham property in the city was bound by entail. Membership of the governing council of 24 almost certainly followed at the end of his shrieval year and it was in that capacity that he attested the parliamentary election in February 1426 and attended a meeting of the common council in the following June. By January 1431, when he was again present at the elections, he had joined the ranks of the aldermen.6 C219/13/4; 14/2.

On 24 Mar. 1432 Louth once again witnessed a parliamentary election in the council chamber, and on 15 June the following year he was himself elected, alongside the mercer, Thomas Kirkham*, to attend the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster on the following 8 July.7 C219/14/3, 4. Both men received wages for 50 days for their attendance at its first session. They resumed their aldermanic duties on their homecoming, and Louth was present among his colleagues on 19 Sept. to hear a petition presented by the city’s vintners. It is unclear when they set out again for the Parliament’s second session (which began on 13 Oct. and continued until 21 Dec.), but by the end of the city’s financial year (in February 1434) both men had received further wages totalling £32 14s. for another 83 days’ service each.8 York City Chamberlains’ Acct. Rolls, 9.

Scant evidence survives of Louth’s private affairs. There is no evidence that he ever took up his family’s trade in mercery, although an early association with the prominent local mercer Robert Yarom and his connexions with men of the Low Countries may suggest commercial interests. He is known to have owned a tenement in St. Andrewgate in 1428, but no other evidence survives of the extent of his property or wealth.9 York Memoranda Bk. iii (Surtees Soc. clxxxvi), 92. Equally obscure are the circumstances in which the Yorkshire knight, Sir Robert Waterton*, came to seal a bond for 50 marks to Louth and John Squyry in May 1430.10 CCR, 1429-35, p. 50.

Louth’s death in 1435 was evidently sudden and unexpected, as he did not find time to make testamentary arrangements, and on 5 Sept. that year the administration of his estate was granted to his brother, Richard, and another mercer and probable kinsman, Robert Louth.11 York registry wills, prob. reg. 3, f. 430v. This younger Robert was admitted to the freedom of the city in 1426 by purchase rather than patrimony, having made a good marriage to Katherine, daughter of the wealthy wool merchant, William Bowes I*, before 1423 when the two of them were admitted to the guild of Corpus Christi. He appears to have been dead by 1437, after which date his son and heir Nicholas assumed the administration of John’s affairs: Kermode, app. 4; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 319; CP40/717, rot. 34.