GRAY, John

The choice of the bailiff to be sent from Hastings to the Yarmouth herring fair in the autumn of 1444 fell between John Carpenter III* and Gray; which of the two actually exercised the office is uncertain. Gray did sail to Yarmouth for the fair of 1448, and not long after his return home he was elected by Hastings to the Parliament summoned to meet in February 1449. On 22 Apr. that year, in between the parliamentary sessions at Westminster, the Brodhull decided that he and other of the Ports’ bailiffs to Yarmouth of the previous autumn were to receive 9s. 8d. for the cost of writs to the admiral of England regarding ‘denne and strande’ and for a ‘de non molestetis’ directed to the Yarmouth authorities.3 Ibid. 18, 25. Evidently, there had been conflict over areas of jurisdiction, something that had often caused serious dissension in the past.

Gray was chosen as a delegate from Hastings to as many as 15 Brodhulls assembled at New Romney between 1447 and 1459,4 Ibid. 22, 24, 25, 30, 31, 34-40. and he was sent to Yarmouth twice more before he was elected bailiff of his home town in 1456. In July 1457, after the end of his term of office, John Clyve*, who had initially been chosen as Hastings’s bailiff at the herring fair, was ‘dismissed’ and selection of a replacement had to made between three nominees: Gray himself, John Goldyng† and Alan Honywood*. Which of these three eventually sailed to Yarmouth is not recorded.5 Ibid. 38. At the Brodhull of April 1458 it was decided that a special meeting should be held on the following 30 May, to which the bailiff of Hastings (Goldyng) would summon Gray to appear to answer certain articles moved against him. Yet when he duly attended, as one of the delegates from Hastings, nothing was recorded about the reason for this summons. It may have been connected with other business of the assembly, which concerned the events of the herring fair held more than 18 months earlier, in the autumn of 1456. One William Stamer of Hastings had seized a ‘coggeship’ laden with goods worth 2,000 marks belonging to merchants of Norwich and Bishop’s Lynn. The authorities at Yarmouth had promptly arrested the bailiffs from the Cinque Ports, holding them responsible for the deeds of their fellow Portsman, whereupon the Brodhull had ordered that Stamer and his crew be detained. This had been accomplished by the time of the special meeting, where it was decided that a letter should be sent from Hastings to the Norfolk merchants to let them know that Stamer was being held a prisoner and that they might have free access to the Port both to sue him for robbery and to retrieve any of their goods found within the liberty.6 Ibid. 39.

Of Gray’s more personal affairs, including his occupation and the extent of his property, little is known. On 10 Jan. 1450 John Tamworth* of Hastings had enfeoffed him and several others of lands and tenements in Winchelsea, Guestling, Pette and Fairlight, and on 27 Nov. following the other feoffees released their rights to Gray alone. Whether he kept the lands for himself or subsequently transferred them to the lawyer Bartholomew Bolney* (in whose notebook the transactions are recorded) is unclear.7 Bolney Bk. (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxiii), 64.