FRANK, Richard

A merchant and mariner, Frank exported grain, peas and woollen cloth; he imported wine.5 E122/96/35, mm. 1, 3, 5. By the early 1450s, he was a shipowner, having acquired a ship named Le Goste.6 KL/C 7/4, p. 13. The wine would have come from southern Europe but he also had commercial dealings with the territories of the Danish crown and, probably, with the Low Countries as well. In the early 1440s he was one of two dozen merchants from Lynn who complained to their corporation about illegal charges and extortions imposed on them in the king of Denmark’s territories, prompting it to send representatives to that ruler.7 KL/C 7/3, ff. 105v, 153v. Such trading activities indicate a burgess of substance. Frank was of sufficient status for the government to expect him to swear the oath to keep the peace administered throughout the country in 1434, and to act as a feoffee for the Wodehouses, a Norfolk family close to the Lancastrian Crown.8 CPR, 1429-36, p. 405; 1436-41, p. 385.

Frank had come of age by 1422 when he became a member of Lynn’s Holy Trinity guild.9 HMC 11th Rep. III, 226, 229. He subsequently joined the lesser guild of Corpus Christi, an institution of which he would later become master.10 King’s Lynn recs., treasurers’ acct., Corpus Christi guild 1439-40, KL/C 57/25. As far as is known, he began his career as an office-holder in the borough at Michaelmas 1433, upon his appointment to the council of 27. Soon afterwards, he achieved promotion to the upper council of 24 and he later served a term as mayor. Some years after completing this term, he quarrelled with the corporation over an account relating to his mayoralty, although he succeeded in gaining exoneration from any claims made against him.11 KL/C 7/4, pp. 109-10.

As an office-holder, Frank was often a member of delegations that met with Lynn’s feudal lord, the bishop of Norwich, and he was one of the burgesses who visited the sick Bishop Brown shortly before his death in December 1445.12 KL/C 7/3, ff. 88, 94, 127v, 155v, 157, 185v, 186, 191, 212v, 228v, 260, 286v. Another prominent figure with whom the burgesses had dealings was Thomas, Lord Scales, a local magnate and regularly visitor to Lynn. On one occasion in the mid 1440s, Scales breakfasted at the tavern of Margaret Frank (possibly the MP’s mother), and Richard helped to provide the entertainment laid on for him when he spent the Christmas of 1444 in the town.13 Ibid. f. 196; King’s Lynn recs., chamberlains’ acct. 1444-5, KL/C 39/55. An even more important visitor was the King, who came to Lynn in 1446, when Frank was one of the burgesses tasked with raising loans from the local guilds to cover the costs of receiving him.14 KL/C 7/3, f. 225.

Having acted as a mainpernor for John Parmenter* and Thomas Botkesham* upon their respective elections to the Parliaments of 1431 and 1432, Frank began his own parliamentary career later in the same decade. During his first Parliament, he was entitled to daily wages of 3s. 4d., the amount Lynn had paid its representatives since the mid fourteenth century. In the end, this generous rate of pay proved too much of a financial burden for the borough and a new daily rate of 2s. was agreed upon when he and Walter Curson* were elected to the Commons of 1442. Curson set off for Westminster on 22 Jan., but Frank remained in Lynn until the following 16 Feb., several weeks after the Parliament had opened.15 Ibid. ff. 151, 153; M. McKisack, Parlty. Repn. English Bors. 89-90. The borough records do not supply a reason for this, although it is possible that ill health or some pressing personal or business matter delayed his departure. Whatever the case, his fellow burgesses must have regarded him as an effective representative, since he sat in successive Parliaments later in the same decade. Frank participated in at least two parliamentary elections after leaving the Commons for the last time. As mayor, he nominated four of the 12 electors who chose Lynn’s MPs for the Parliament of November 1449 and was party to the formal return made between the burgesses on the one hand and the bishop of Norwich’s steward on the other.16 KL/C 7/3, f. 269v. Borough records show that he was also one of the electors after Edward IV summoned his first Parliament, an assembly for which the formal return for Lynn has not survived.17 KL/C 7/4, p. 167.

Apart from representing Lynn as an MP, Frank visited London on the borough’s behalf in 1439, in connexion with the King’s demands for a loan. The King had requested £100, but the corporation agreed to lend only half that amount. It entrusted the money to Frank and Walter Curson, who were in any case due to ride to London to discuss the purchase of Lynn’s toll booth from the bishop of Norwich. With regard to their negotiations with the bishop, Frank and Curson were authorized to offer his councillor, William Yelverton*, an annual fee of 40s., if he would act for the borough in this and other matters.18 KL/C 7/3, ff. 101v, 105. Frank also travelled up to the capital on private business: minutes of the King’s council dating from June 1443 record that ‘Frankes bille of Lynne is graunted’ (the subject of this bill is unknown),19 PPC, v. 284. and he was a feoffee and executor for an uncle and namesake who was a grocer in the City. It was in his capacity as one of the elder Richard Frank’s feoffees that he became involved in a Chancery suit over a decade and a half after his uncle died in 1438. The suit related to the activities of John Frank, the grocer’s son, who had embarked upon a criminal career despite having entered clerical orders. Indicted and outlawed for murder and other felonies in 1445, John had been attainted in the court of King’s bench two years later for breaking into Clerkenwell priory at the head of a band of thieves and stealing a monstrance containing the Host and other valuables. Again at large by the mid 1450s, he had embarked on a further life of crime in London and Middlesex. The plaintiffs in the Chancery suit were John Frank’s sister, Isabel, and her husband, Richard Whele, another London grocer, who brought their bill in 1455. Its purpose was to gain possession of properties in the City for which her father had made no specific provision in his will, but which John had evidently expected to inherit. Although Frank and other surviving feoffees of his uncle were the defendants in this suit, it is more than likely that they supported the Wheles’ actions but desired the safeguard of a court order before they would transfer the properties to them.20 PCC 24 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 190); C1/25/47-53.

Although by no means a lawbreaker on the scale of his cousin John, Frank himself occasionally ran into trouble with those in authority. For example, in mid 1431 he and two other burgesses, John Holdernesse and John Nicholasson (all described as ‘mariners’) were accused in Chancery of disobedience towards the mayor and ‘insurrection against the peace’. Six years later, William Cantelowe*, victualler of Calais, sued Frank and Holdernesse in the same court. Cantelowe alleged that they had refused to co-operate when the Crown had commandeered their ship to carry supplies to Calais, and had sent the vessel to Newcastle on their own business instead.21 KL/C 7/3, f. 11; C1/70/128. Either later that decade or in the early 1440s, Frank and another Lynn merchant, John Pygot, tried to avoid paying customs at Hull when a vessel from Lynn bearing goods belonging to them docked at that port. After one of the customs officers there, Patrick Skipwith*, discovered the attempted evasion, they entered into an obligation for just over £160 with him for the redemption of their cargo, but he passed the security on to Sir Henry Percy, warden of the east march, who then sued them for debt on the strength of it.22 E159/219, brevia Hil. rot.17d.

There is also evidence for other disputes involving Frank. In the early 1430s he captured and detained a Breton, perhaps at sea, an action that provoked a quarrel with another burgess, John Boucher. The corporation at Lynn intervened, persuading him and Boucher to submit their differences to arbitration.23 KL/C 7/3, f. 11v. During the same decade or a little later, Frank was a defendant in a Chancery suit brought by Richard Bye. Bye said that he had ordered his ship, the Gost of Lynne (almost certainly the vessel Frank later owned) to sail from Zeeland with a cargo of wheat and other merchandise to Bordeaux, from where it was to return to Lynn with a consignment of wine and other goods. He had further instructed the ship’s master, none other than Frank’s associate, John Holdernesse, to sail via Winchelsea, from where a new master would assume command. Despite this, Holdernesse had taken the vessel all the way to the French port himself, in accordance with a secret agreement he had made with Frank (whose exact role in the affair is unclear) and the ship’s purser, John Bryse. Bye added that Holdernesse and the purser had taken no less than a month to sail back to Lynn from France, thereby adding to his running costs and putting the vessel and its cargo at risk, and concluded his bill by demanding 1,000 marks in damages from the three men.24 C1/45/330. By the mid 1450s Frank was quarrelling with John Odeham, a draper from Bury St. Edmunds, who sued him for debt in the court of common pleas. The plea rolls reveal that he had served as Odeham’s bailiff and receiver at Bury, although not how he had come to enter the draper’s service. Odeham alleged that an audit of Frank’s account taken in March 1447 had revealed a shortfall of £15, and a Suffolk jury decided in the plaintiff’s favour in early 1455. Initially, Frank refused to accept this verdict, so incurring an outlawry, but he subsequently paid the debt, along with his opponent’s costs and damages.25 CP40/773, rot. 130d; E159/232, recorda Trin. rot. 17.

Late in the same decade, Frank helped to resolve a quarrel to which he was not a party, by arbitrating in a dispute over the will of his old associate Walter Curson.26 King’s Lynn recs, arbitration award 1459, KL/C 50/520. Still active in the early 1460s, Frank helped to site guns for Lynn’s defence shortly before the deposition of Henry VI,27 KL/C 7/4, p. 145. and he was still a member of the council of 24 at Michaelmas 1462. He was no longer on the council a year later, indicating that he may have died in the meantime. As an account for the local Trinity guild shows, he was certainly dead by the autumn of 1468.28 King’s Lynn recs., acct. scabins Trin. guild 1467-8, KL/C 38/21. While Frank’s heirs are unknown, there is some evidence for his property at Lynn. In the late 1440s he acquired an annual rent of 10s. from the corporation, from which he also purchased a house outside the east gate in 1451, for £4 6s. 8d.29 KL/C 7/3, f. 245; KL/C 7/4, p. 317. In the mid 1450s he and two other burgesses, Thomas Burgh* and John Curson, bought a couple of stalls or shops in the Grassmarket, where they already held an inn known as the Sarasynshede.30 King’s Lynn recs., deed, 1455, KL/C 50/232. In addition, Frank rented property from the corporation, from which he obtained a ten-year lease of a meadow and appurtenant tenements in 1438, and the Trinity guild, from which he rented cellars, tenements and a chamber.31 KL/C 7/3, f. 93v; King’s Lynn recs., accts. scabins Trin. guild 1438-9, 1440-1, 1467-8, KL/C 38/17, 18, 21. On various occasions, he also had interests in other properties as a feoffee-to-use. In 1433, for example, he acted in that capacity for Thomas Catworth* and William Browning (whom he had probably met through his uncle, since they were also London grocers), after they had gained temporary possession of holdings at Lynn through a mortgage.32 CAD, ii. A2966. In the following year he was party to a transaction involving a manor at Hillington a few miles to the north-east of the borough, possibly on behalf of Henry Thoresby*.33 CPR, 1429-36, p. 345.