FROMOND, William

Towards the end of his life, in January 1441, Fromond sold to the lawyer Richard Dammer* a moiety of a messuage, a shop and 42 acres of land in New and Old Shoreham in Sussex, which had previously belonged to his deceased brother John; and Margaret Fromond, a kinswoman of his (described neither as a wife or widow), formally relinquished to Dammer a fourth part of the same properties three years later.3 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 450-1; CP25(1)/241/89/10. These transactions serve to establish that the MP was not a native of Winchester, the city he represented; rather, he was almost certainly related to Gregory Fromond†, who had sat for New Shoreham in two of the Parliaments of Richard II’s reign.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 136. Contrary to what was stated in Gregory’s biography, no evidence has been found to prove that the Fromonds of Shoreham belonged to the same family as the well-known John Fromond (d.1420) of Sparsholt in Hampshire – the wealthy lawyer celebrated as a benefactor of Winchester College (which he long served as its steward), and founder of the impressive two-storey chantry chapel which stands in the garth of the college’s cloisters. Significantly, they were not mentioned in the childless John’s will, which stipulated that the bulk of his estates should be sold for the benefit of the college, and that his kinsman John Esteney should inherit Sparsholt.5 T.F. Kirby, Annals of Winchester Coll. 163-9; Arch. Jnl. xvi. 169-73. John Fromond’s heir was Alice, wife of John Dent of Basildon, Berks., the gdda. of his aunt Edith; H. Chitty, ‘Fromond’s Chantry’, Archaeologia, ser. 2, lxxv. 141.

It is not known what took William Fromond from Sussex to Winchester, although it may be pertinent to note that another of the city’s MPs in this period, John Wryther*, also came from New Shoreham. Both men were merchants, and were perhaps drawn to the city by its role as one of the most important centres of cloth production in the country. Initially, Fromond, sometimes styled ‘draper’, set up in business in London, where he witnessed a gift of goods and chattels made by a local brewer in early 1415,6 CCR, 1413-19, p. 201. but he took up more permanent residence in Winchester within the next few years, so that by 1439 he could be described as a ‘former citizen of London’.7 CP40/715, rot. 258. In Winchester, besides buildings in Shulworth Street he acquired property in the 1420s from John Choude and his wife, Joan, notably a tenement in High Street, another on the corner of Parchment Street, and holdings nearby which included an inn called Le Swan. Perhaps his own wife, Margery, was a local woman, and related to Joan Choude. In any case, she was a person of consequence, for when, in 1425, the couple obtained a papal licence to have a portable altar, she was called ‘noblewoman’, whereas Fromond himself was merely a ‘donsel’.8 CPL, vii. 416; D.J. Keene, Surv. Winchester (Winchester Studies, 2), ii. nos. 71, 75, 78-80, 122, 128-9, 324, 348. It was noted in the city ct. that Joan Choude and Margery Fromond were both examined and agreed to the property transactions without coercion by their husbands: Stowe 846, ff. 152v, 153.

Fromond’s mercantile activities through the port of Southampton were quite extensive. His interests in the cloth trade are clear from his imports of linen and regularly shipments of woollen cloth, although in 1427 several lengths of fabric belonging to him were confiscated by the royal searcher for alleged evasion of customs’ duties. Exporters of cloth not infrequently became involved in the reciprocal trade in wine from Gascony, and such was the case with Fromond. In the 1430s he also became engaged in the victualling of English garrisons and field forces in France, which led him to speculate in dealings in a variety of other produce. For instance, in May 1431 he obtained a licence to ship grain to Bordeaux, perhaps for the men serving under Thomas Beaufort, count of Perche, to whose retinue he was temporarily attached. In the following spring he took out letters of protection for one year as about to cross the Channel in the company of the Regent of France, the duke of Bedford, presumably to act as a victualler of his army, but these letters were revoked on 6 Sept. 1432 because he failed to set sail. It may be that he had not actually intended to go: such letters of protection were useful for avoiding unwelcome summonses to the law courts.9 E122/184/3, pt. 1, f. 35v; Port Bk. 1427-30 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1913), 34, 40; DKR, xlviii. 281, 286; CPR, 1429-36, p. 222. Shortly afterwards he stood surety for Richard Trenode* of Bristol, then licenced to ship beans from Somerset to Bayonne, promising to certify the Exchequer about the port of export, while in the autumn of 1433 he himself obtained permission to transport 200 quarters of wheat from Sussex to Bordeaux.10 E159/209, recorda Mich. rot. 6d; 210, recorda Mich. rots. 33, 33d.

Fromond’s trading activities led to his involvement in many lawsuits in the courts at Westminster, in which in the early years of his career he most often acted as the plaintiff. At first, these focused on his dealings in London. In July 1419 he was permitted by the mayor to sue Thomas London, a taverner or fishmonger, and Stephen Payn, a vintner, in the common-law courts outside the City because they usually dwelled beyond the walls. Two bonds entered into in London the same year by Thomas Gibbes of Oxford later led to a suit in the common pleas in which Fromond claimed that the esquire owed him £34 as the unpaid residue of the sums due. In July 1426 he sued one John Derk in the London courts on a plea of fraud. Three years earlier, so Fromond’s story went, he had employed Derk as his agent for the sale of 14 casks of red wine, instructing him to find a merchant able to pay for the wine out of his current assets, but Derk deceived him by introducing him to a Lombard, Niccolò Martini, whom he had dressed in smart clothing and warranted to be financially sound, whereas in fact he was a vagrant. Fromond delivered the wine to Martini, on receiving promise of payment of £46 13s.4d. in instalments spread over three months, but Martini evaded him and the law by taking sanctuary.11 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 68, 201; CP40/641, rot. 220d. On occasion Fromond was himself employed as a factor, most notably by the chancellor of the Exchequer, Henry Somer*, who owned extensive properties in Winchester in right of his wife. The connexion enabled him, as Somer’s ‘servant’, to bring a suit in the court of the Exchequer of pleas in 1427. His bill accused a Salisbury weaver called Stephen Hert of failing to keep to a bond for £15 13s. 4d. which Hert had allegedly entered the previous year. Perhaps with Somer’s help, he was eventually successful, and was awarded costs of one mark.12 E13/138, rot. 3d.

Several of Fromond’s suits in the common pleas were brought against debtors, whose provenance is revealing of the wide reach of his commercial concerns, ranging from Dorset, Somerset, Berkshire and Wiltshire, as well as closer to home in Winchester. In Michaelmas term 1433 he had suits in progress for sums amounting to over £63. However, that same term he himself was summoned to answer two creditors: Richard Goolde, to whom he allegedly owed £37, and John Morys of Salisbury for £14 6s. 8d., as recorded in bonds which Fromond had entered in 1427 and 1431, respectively. Fromond’s defence was the same in both cases, namely that he had been unlawfully held prisoner, first by Goolde and others of his covin at Tonbridge in Kent, and then by Morys at Reading, and that he had only sealed the bonds under duress. This the plaintiffs flatly denied. Six years later Fromond was sued by Robert Colpays*, the Winchester lawyer, for a debt of £2, perhaps for legal fees, although at the same time he himself brought actions against the vintner Adam Copendale* and William Hacombleyn, a former citizen and grocer of London, for 50 marks, and against two Winchester men for £10.13 CPR, 1416-22, p. 233; CP40/657, rot. 100; 661, rot. 75; 691, rots. 117, 295, 458d, 577, 577d, 595; 715, rots. 189d, 258.

Fromond showed little inclination to participate in the government of Winchester. He supplied wine to the chamberlains of the city to provide hospitality for visitors in 1418-19, but never held a higher office than that of bailiff of the commons. During his term he had to present accounts at the Exchequer for the sum of £20 10s. deducted from the fee farm at source to spend on repairs to the castle, in accordance with a commission of 1424 for this annual expenditure to be made for seven years. His term as bailiff fell two years before his only recorded election to Parliament in 1429. For his service in the Lower House he was paid £4 on 12 Jan. 1430 (for the first session, lasting from 22 Sept. to 20 Dec. 1429), and £4 15s. on 20 Apr. following, two months after the Parliament had been dissolved. The £4 13s.10d. also paid him in April was apparently intended for his colleague, Thomas Dunster*. While at Westminster he had been sent a letter by the civic authorities regarding the payment of poundage, a matter which had been under discussion in the first session.14 E101/492/1; Hants RO, Winchester recs., W/E1/14 nos. 5, 16.

Fromond’s appearances as a defendant in lawsuits for debt, taken together with the sale of his property in Sussex in 1441, perhaps indicate that he encountered financial difficulties in his later years. Still alive in the spring of 1446, when he contributed no more than 8d. towards the wages of Winchester’s MPs,15 Winchester subsidy roll, W/E4/4. he died before 3 Aug. 1447. On that date property in Sparkford, Hampshire, of which he had been enfeoffed in association with Thomas Dunster, was conveyed by the latter alone to William and Edith Mayhowe.16 Winchester Coll. muns. 18057-9.