JAMES, Peter

Peter may have come from Weymouth in Dorset and have been related to John James† the former MP for that borough. Both men were associated with William Nicholl, the prominent Southampton merchant: John as Nicholl’s creditor,6 CPR, 1416-22, p. 227. and Peter evidently on a much more friendly basis, for he asked Nicholl’s wife to be his daughter’s godmother. Peter, who had settled in Southampton by 1411, when he rented a cellar from God’s House,7 Cart. God’s House, ii (Soton. Rec. Ser. xx), 393. began to take an active part in the town’s affairs two years later, and by August 1416, when his daughter was baptized in Holy Rood church, he could number among his closest associates not only Nicholl but also two other leading merchants – Walter Fettiplace, the baby’s godfather, and William Soper*, whose wife was the other godmother.8 Black Bk. ii. 57-58. He and Fettiplace were particularly close and may well have been connected by marriage: the two men were frequently partners in trading ventures, and together they and their wives obtained papal indults to have private confessors in 1425.9 CPL, vii. 417. The friends acquired in April 1416 a ‘great messuage’ on the west side of English Street on the corner of Broad Lane, which they divided between them and before long converted into ‘duobus magnis novis tenementis’, with James taking the northern one. However they allegedly failed to pay the annual rent of 33s. 4d. claimed by God’s House, a matter which went to arbitration in December 1418, with the parties being bound in £40 to abide by the award of certain lawyers, or else that of the chief justices. In the event James and Fettiplace were found liable for the arrears. James’s part of the property, which had two vaults, a curtilege and a garden, seems to have stretched some distance along Broad Lane to the west, and remained in his family for nearly a century.10 CCR, 1413-19, p. 517; Cart. God’s House, ii. 346-7; Queen’s Coll. Oxf., God’s House deeds, 374; C. Platt, Med. Southampton, 271-2; E326/11799, 11800, 11804. In addition, he bought from a London vintner a tenement on the other side of English Street, which, since it too had a vault and cellar, doubtless proved useful for storing the barells of wine he imported.11 Soton. recs. SC4/2/246. Outside Southampton, and apparently in right of his wife, James held messuages, lands and rents quite near in Drayton and further away at Bighton, which he exchanged in the winter of 1428-9 for 12 messuages, some 120 acres of land and £4 rent in New Alresford.12 CP25(1)/207/32/23, 25. In the tax assessments of 1436 his landed holdings in Hampshire were said to be worth £10 p.a., but perhaps this sum did not include the income from his valuable property in Southampton.13 E179/173/92.

James evidently prospered through trade, perhaps as a consequence of dealing in a wide range of goods. He supplied pipes and lead for repairs to the town acqueduct as well as 3,000 slates for other local works, and as a chandler he helped to equip vessels built under the direction of his friend William Soper, the clerk of the King’s ships, notably in 1416 when the Holigost de la Tour was fitted out for the duke of Bedford’s expedition, and in the following year by providing 130 wainscots for making masts for the Jesus of the Tower. In 1437 while Soper was building the Little Jesus of the Tower James sold him ropes, pulleys and oars, as well as a boat cover and other nautical gear.14 Stewards’ Bks. 1428-34, pp. 26, 92; Navy of Lancastrian Kings (Navy Recs. Soc. cxxiii), 126-7, 214, 218; Procs. Hants Field Club, xviii. 176. He himself owned at least one ship, which he sometimes used for his considerable trading ventures overseas. Cloth was his principal export: he shipped as many as 188 whole cloths in 1423-4, 60 more as a single consignment on The James which left for Lisbon in July 1426, and a cargo numbering 146 in September 1427. But he also exported grain, such as a shipment valued at £33 6s. 8d. which he and Walter Fettiplace dispatched with some 116 lengths of cloth in February 1427. Although his principal import was wine, he also traded in fruit, cider, alum, iron, canvas, fish, oil and madder.15 E122/184/3, pt. 1, ff. 34, 36, 41, 42v; 184/3, pt. 4, m. 2; 184/3, pt. 3, ff. 3, 4, 15, 22, 26v, 27v, 33v, 34; 141/21, ff. 1, 11, 12v, 17v, 20, 25, 38v; Port Bks. 1427-30 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1913), 8, 12, 25, 26, 29, 34, 35; 1435-6 (Soton. Rec. Ser. vii), 4, 20, 24, 36, 54, 56. On occasion he was guilty of customs frauds, as when in March 1423 the royal searcher boarding a barge of his came across some blankets and white stamin (coarse worsted cloth) for which subsidies had not been paid, as well as discovering a stowaway, a monk from Goldcliff in Wales who was intending to sail to France without the necessary writ of passage.16 E122/184/3, pt. 2, m. 7. Once unloaded in Southampton, James’s merchandise was transferred to smaller boats for trading along the coast, or sent by cart to a number of inland towns, including Salisbury, Gloucester and Worcester, but for the most part to Oxford.17 Port Bk. 1439-40 (Soton. Rec. Ser. v), 42; Brokage Bk. 1439-40 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1941), passim.

Over the years James brought several actions for debt in the court of common pleas, very often against taverners or hostelers whom he had supplied with wine. John Dolyte*, the Chichester inn-keeper, was outlawed at his suit for £10, and in the Michaelmas term of 1423 James was suing six different debtors for sums amounting to £50 18s. He and his partner Walter Fettiplace accused Thomas Gibbes of Oxford of failing to pay them £40 for wine bought at Southampton, which, however, according to the defendant, was unfit for consumption; and the two also brought actions against a London stockfishmonger and the widow of an Essex esquire, each for the sum of 20 marks. In Trinity term 1432 James appeared in court in person to sue a Cirencester dyer for £40 and an gentleman from Charford for £5. Sometimes a favourable judgement proved hard to obtain, for although outlawed by the court, his debtors were able to secure royal pardons.18 CPR, 1416-22, p. 159; 1422-9, p. 369; 1429-36, p. 430; CP40/647, rot. 94; 651, rots. 18, 466; 661, rot. 75; 686 rot. 95.

Certain of James’s ventures overseas also met with serious setbacks. In 1421 or 1422 he and Fettiplace, in partnership with three local mariners, hired from William Soper one of the King’s ships, known as the Little Holy Ghost of Southampton, to sail to Portugal to trade. On the voyage ‘sur la haute meer’ they met up with a carrack laden with 40 pokes of Spanish wool. This they seized, and, abandoning their original plan, returned at once to Southampton. There the partners in the scheme gave the customers (who included Soper) sureties for the subsidies due and obtained a licence to export the wool to the staple at Calais, but even though it was divided between different vessels which left at different times, it was all taken by the King’s enemies into Le Crotoy. As the accounts of the customers were charged with the sum of £57 13s. 10d. for duty (even though the partners claimed that the wool was really only worth £30), James and Fettiplace presented a petition to the Commons to ask the King to acquit and discharge them, and it is quite possible that James himself was responsible for promoting this bill (which bears no date) when he sat in the Parliament of 1427. Even so, although the petition was sponsored by the Lower House and sent to the Lords, it failed to obtain a satisfactory response, merely ‘Le Roi s’advisera’.19 SC8/111/5504; 118/5863; Navy of Lancastrian Kings, 22-23. At the same time James may still have been dealing with a suit in Chancery brought earlier that year by one Bonoche de Pyere of Pisa, who claimed that while in England under letters of safe conduct and protection he had been wrongfully arrested at Southampton and kept in prison for 26 days after James had asserted he was from Spain and an enemy of the King. Both men were examined in Chancery on 12 July, after the Council had made a ruling regarding the status of Florentine merchants visiting England. James stated that he had been acting as lieutenant of Southampton’s mayor and in the belief that Pyere adhered to the King’s enemies in Brittany; the Italian testified that he had been negotiating the ransom of a Florentine youth with his Breton captors.20 C1/69/127; E122/184/3, pt. 5, mm. 43, 44.

James had well-established trading links with the Iberian peninsula, on occasion acting in partnership with Soper and Fettiplace. However, when, in 1432, Soper’s factor, David Savage, sailed into Bilbao on the Mary of Bilbao, which was laden with the partners’ cargo of cloth and other merchandise to the value of £500, notwithstanding his safe conduct he was thrown into gaol, a ransom of £200 was demanded for his release, and the goods were seized. Fortunately, three merchants from Bilbao visited London, and James and his associates petitioned the chancellor for them to be confined in the Fleet until Savage was released and their goods returned.21 C1/9/403. It would appear that James sometimes acted as a broker for the ransom of English prisoners in France, but it was alleged by John Dyng, a ‘simple pore man’ from Barling in Essex who was captured near Mont St. Michel, that although £11 was delivered to James as full payment for his ransom, the latter failed to complete the transaction, leaving Dyng in ‘grete duresse of imprisonment’ until bailed by someone else.22 C1/10/269. Despite the evidence of occasional conflict of interests, on the whole James appears to have kept up amicable relations with foreign merchants trading in Southampton. He stood pledge for the payment of local customs for merchants from Rouen and Lisbon; he used his property to house foreigners trading in the town, and he took his share of the profits of hosting and acting for aliens, notably by buying wine and iron from his guests.23 Port Bk. 1439-40, 13, 19, 22; E101/128/31, m. 8; 128/35; E179/173/105, 107, 110. Their dealings often involved large sums of money: for instance, in June 1430 he and John Wryther* of Winchester were bound over to pay £223 4s. 2d. to Battista de Negroni and another Genoese merchant.24 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 261.

James was active in the affairs of Southampton over a period of 36 years. He was only ever senior bailiff, never junior, held office as mayor for seven terms, and for at least ten years did duty as an alderman. Given his readiness to be engaged in the business of the commonalty it is somewhat surprising that he was only returned to Parliament once. During his second mayoralty, in 1428-9, he completed the town’s purchase of the West Hall from the Wiltshire lawyer, Robert Long*, a process which required lengthy and expensive negotiations and entailed journeys to Wraxall and Salisbury, and he was instrumental in finding the Hall’s first tenant, Paolo Morelli, the chief Florentine agent resident in Southampton, who agreed to pay a rent of as much as £10 p.a. He rode to Winchester for the assizes in 1434, and was also involved in July that year in the dispute with the prior of St. Swithun’s over tolls levied in Southampton. The matter went to arbitration, with James and three others including the then mayor being bound in £200 to abide by the decision of selected lawyers (the borough having engaged John Fortescue* and Robert Colpays*). Even so, the matter was not resolved for several years.25 Stewards’ Bks. 1428-34, pp. 8, 10, 30-32, 86, 94; Reg.Common Seal (Hants Rec. Ser. ii), nos. 234-5, 238-9. During his third mayoralty James was charged £20 by the barons of the Exchequer, this being the value of a felon’s goods which he had seized in his official capacity. He pleaded the charter granted to Southampton by Henry IV in 1401 which permitted the mayor and burgesses to keep felons’ goods on conviction, but nevertheless lost the case. While mayor in the spring of 1436 he was absent for several weeks in London on business of the commonalty, leaving his friend Fettiplace as his lieutenant at home. Besides accounting for the fee farm at the Exchequer he also had to defend an action between the town and Cardinal Beaufort and his tenants. The longstanding dispute with St. Swithun’s took him once more to Winchester in February 1439, and he was there again with the then mayor in April 1442 for talks with the sheriff of Hampshire. Early in his fourth mayoralty a more serious quarrel erupted with the prior of St. Denys priory near Southampton, who alleged that on the night of 25 Oct. 1442 James and several others had broken the priory’s closes at West Kingsland and removed the fences. The mayor was indicted before the j.p.s at Winchester in the following April, and summoned before the King’s bench in the Trinity term of 1444. There, he and his co-defendents cited several of Southampton’s charters, beginning with that of 1199. They stressed that the charter of 1401 (confirmed in 1425), provided that the mayor and four aldermen had full powers and authority to hear and determine all disputes in the town and its liberty, so that indictments before the Hampshire j.p.s were not admissable. The case was postponed, and when summoned again, in the Michaelmas term of 1447, James pleaded a general pardon granted to him on 2 June 1446.26 Stewards’ Bks. 1434-9 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1939), 15n, 74; Soton. recs. SC5/1/6, f. 20v; Port Bk. 1435-6, pp. 120, 124; KB27/733, rex rot. 22; 746, rex rot. 19d; C67/39, m. 46. Meanwhile, another matter concerning him had come before the King’s Council. James, as mayor, and the water-bailiff, Nicholas Holmehegge*, had been charging a toll of 3d. on every pound’s worth of property and merchandise entering or leaving Southampton. Four merchants from the Hanse objected to this, and were required in July 1443 to enter recognizances for £40 that they would perform all that the Council determined. Presumably James had to appear before the Council to justify the levy.27 CCR, 1441-7, p. 152.

James often worked in association with John Fleming*, the common clerk and later recorder of Southampton, whose daughter married his presumed son, Andrew, and, perhaps during his mayoralty of 1447-9 (when Andrew was first bailiff then sheriff), they and Fleming ousted another merchant, Thomas White, from the franchise. Peter had a personal grievance against White, who apparently without justification had seized 25 butts of rumney and two tuns of bastard wine shipped to him from Spain, but there were much wider issues involved, touching on the way Southampton was governed and the exclusion of White and his father-in-law, the litigious John Payn I*, from power, which were to reach a climax in intense factional disputes after James’s death.28 C1/16/352; 17/235. Clearly the seeds of dissension were sown in his lifetime. Indeed, James’s final years were troubled with family quarrels in which Payn played a leading part. James’s daughter, Katherine, who while still a minor had been married to one Andrew Payn (possibly a relation of John’s) and been widowed before she was 19, chose as her second husband John Serle†. But her father, ‘for asmuche as he was displeased of the seide mariage’, dispossessed them of the two messuages which Katherine held in dower, along with goods worth £200. By the mediation of Edmund Beaufort, marquess of Dorset, James and Serle submitted themselves to stand by the judgement of their fellow burgesses, Fettiplace, Soper and Fleming, then mayor of Southampton, but James refused to be bound by their decision, causing the Serles to appeal to the chancellor for redress. In their plea they were supported by John Payn, a circumstance which can have done little to ease the tensions between the townspeople,29 Black Bk. ii. 57-59; C1/15/184; 73/144-5. especially as they seem to have been successful in their suit. Certainly, two adjacent tenements on the west side of Bugle Street (one of them known as Bugle Hall), left James’s possession in the mid 1440s and were then transferred to his son-in-law.30 Cart. God’s House, ii. 276-7.

James died at an unknown date between September 1449 and 1451, and most of his property passed to his son, William.31 Ibid. 347; Southampton Terrier 1454 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xv), nos. 157, 258-61, 486. By January 1457 his widow had married Walter Bacyn, and she then relinquished to the commonalty of Southampton the vault and cellar on the east side of English Street which she and James had acquired more than 30 years earlier. This may have been in order to pay back part of the large debt of £36 17s. owing to the town on James’s final account as mayor.32 Soton. recs. SC4/2/289; 5/1/8, f. 9; Remembrance Bk. i (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1927), 43.