HALL, Simon

The lack of records for Sandwich before the early 1430s makes Hall’s career difficult to reconstruct, but he came from a local family which supplied jurats for the town’s government in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. In April 1414 he made a grant of a tenement in St. Mary’s parish to Henry Cock*, William Gaylor† and Henry Helde.2 Harvard Univ. Law School Lib., English deeds, 301, 382. Although only in October 1420, when he witnessed a local deed, can his membership of the bench of jurats be confirmed, as he had been chosen as mayor in December 1418 he had evidently been elected as a jurat sometime before this. Almost certainly he continued as such beyond 1425, when he was elected to his only Parliament. It is possible that Hall died before the start of the Sandwich year books in 1432, and that the Simon Hall who, in May 1434, sold a tenement in the town to Thomas Horne was his son. This individual was elected to the ranks of the jurats in December 1436, and in 1445 was also appointed as one of the keepers of the keys to the common chest.3 Sandwich ‘Old Black Bk.’, SA/Ac 1, ff. 18v, 32, 38, 46, 50, 52, 56, 59v, 63, 66, 69.