MANNING, John

A man with more than one East Anglian namesake, Manning is difficult to identify. For want of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that he was the burgess of Yarmouth who features in the town’s court rolls between 1419 and 1440.4 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls, 1419-40, Y/C 4/129-48. In this period there were also John Mannings of Great Ellingham, Crimplesham and Norwich, and a John Manning was a legal counsellor of John Mowbray, 2nd duke of Norfolk: CPR, 1422-9, pp. 270, 378; 1429-36, pp. 17, 32, 50; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 316-17; L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 404. Probably it was Mowbray’s counsellor who served on numerous E. Anglian gaol delivery commissions in the second and third decades of the 15th century, who acted as a proxy for the abbot of St. Benet of Hulme in the Parl. of 1420 and who was steward of the liberty of Bishop’s Lynn in 1429: C66/394-6, 398-403, 412, 424; SC10/47/2301; C219/14/1. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 523, states that the MP was the steward of Lynn, but without supplying a supporting reference. In the early years of this period, he and his wife, acting in her capacity as executrix of her previous husband, appeared in the borough court to bring suits for debt against various foreign merchants.5 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls, 1419-20, 1424-5, Y/C 4/129, m. 1d; 134, m. 4d.

Manning gained election to the Commons a year after completing a term as a bailiff of Yarmouth. The Parliament of 1429 dissolved in February 1430 but he and his fellow MP, Thomas Hall I*, were still waiting for their expenses (for the 143 days they had spent travelling to and attending this assembly) over two and a half years later. In the end, they resorted to legal action in the court of King’s bench in Michaelmas term 1432, when they sued the bailiffs of 1429-30, Robert Ellis* and Thomas Eyr, for the money they were owed.6 KB27/686, rot. 21.

Styled a ‘shipman’ in 1432, Manning was probably involved in the overseas trade, and a year later a leet court at Yarmouth amerced him for storing grain on his neighbours’ quays. During the early 1430s he was engaged in a number of suits with another burgess, Geoffrey Terry, and in October 1433 the borough seized some of Terry’s goods so that Manning might recover a debt of £8 10s. He afterwards sued Terry for a debt of £21 16s. and his opponent was imprisoned in Yarmouth’s jail. In November 1435, the King commanded the town’s bailiffs to proceed with hearing this action, notwithstanding a previous writ ordering them to send the prisoner up to London with the causes for his detention. Manning was still alive in the spring of 1440, when he was again a plaintiff in the town’s court, but probably died not long afterwards. His wife was a sole plaintiff in the same court in November 1442; had she still had a husband at that date, he would surely have been her co-plaintiff. Manning had a son, Andrew, amerced in 1433 for being over the age of 12 and not a member of one of Great Yarmouth’s tithings, but it is not clear whether he survived his father.7 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls, 1431-4, 1435-6, 1439-40, 1442-3, Y/C 4/140, m. 3; 141, mm. 4d, 6d, 13d; 142, mm. 1, 11d; 144, m. 1; 148, m. 5d; 150, m. 8.