NEWBY, William

Newby’s career is of greater interest than those of his fellow Leicester MPs of the period. Little is known of its early years. When he first appears in the records in the early 1420s he was already numbered among the leading burgesses of what was probably his native town. He attested five of the six parliamentary elections held there between April 1421 and February 1426, on the last occasion while serving as mayor, before being himself elected to successive Parliaments in 1427 and 1429.4 C219/12/5; 13/1-5; 14/1. He was one of the comparatively few townsmen to have landed interests outside the borough. On 14 Apr. 1425, in company with Richard Balle of Worthington, he leased for a term to expire in June 1429 a plot of woodland in the park of Sir Ralph Shirley† at Staunton Harold near Worthington in the north-west of the county. Such interests explain why he was one of the few Leicester MPs who appears in the Leicestershire tax returns of 1436, where his annual income was assessed at the minimum taxable figure of £5.5 Leics. RO, Fisher mss, DE170/71; E179/192/59.

Thereafter Newby attested four of the borough’s next five elections between 1431 and 1436, served another term as mayor and was again elected to Parliament on 21 Dec. 1441.6 C219/14/2-4; 15/1, 2. For these years few other indications of his activities survive, and those that do are more tantalizing than revealing. In the election indenture of 8 Sept. 1435 his name appears as an attestor not to the borough election but to that of the county, another sign that he had gained, either in his own right or as a lessee, property holdings outside the town. On 13 Oct. 1438, described as ‘of Leicester, gentleman’, he entered into a recognizance in the large sum of £160 to John Buckingham, prior of Jesus of Bethlehem, Sheen, and John Juyn, c.j.c.p., to pay £20 p.a. until the whole sum was paid. There is nothing to indicate what lay behind this recognizance, but it may be that he had taken a lease of the priory’s property in Leicestershire.7 C219/14/5; CCR, 1435-41, p. 231.

The later years of Newby’s career are better documented. On 19 July 1444 he and Adam Racy* were nominated by William Braunston, one of the deputy bailiffs of the town and later mayor, and Robert Braunston to act as arbiters in an extraordinary dispute. Among the allegations made by the Braunstons was that Alice, wife of William Watford, and two other women had dressed themselves as men and lain armed in wait to ambush William Braunston. The arbiters awarded that Alice and her confederate, William Richmond, should pay the Braunstons £10, but with the very curious additional provision that the latter, ‘ob reuerenciam eorum specialis’ for John, Viscount Beaumont, and William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, should repay £8.8 CP40/738, rot. 338. A year later, while serving his third term as mayor, Newby became involved in the affairs of one of the leading knights of the county. On 22 July 1445 Sir Laurence Berkeley* delivered to him six bonds to hold in escrow pending the settlement of a minor dispute.9 CP40/740, rot. 330; 751, rot. 604.

These two references, together with his nomination in 1442 to act as an attorney to deliver seisin, might be taken to imply that Newby had some legal training. But if he did he combined legal with more important commercial interests. In suits in the central courts he is variously described as ‘merchant’ and, more strangely, ‘ostler’, presumably in the sense of innkeeper. For example, in Easter term 1448, it was as an ‘ostler’ that he was sued by John Hampton II* for close-breaking at Desford, a few miles to the west of Leicester.10 CAD, i. A1427; KB27/747, rot. 62d; CP40/749, rot. 180. Yet ‘merchant’ was the more common designation, and one piece of evidence survives to illustrate his trading interests. The Southampton brokage book for 1447-8 records him exporting wool and importing wine and iron through that port.11 Brokage Bk. 1447-8 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xlii), 14. For his designation as ‘merchant’: e.g. CP40/746, rot. 382; 761, rot. 208.

By far the most important evidence of Newby’s activities dates from shortly before his final election to Parliament on 6 Feb. 1449. On 2 Apr. 1448, before royal commissioners sitting at Leicester, he was one of a jury that laid presentments against Edward Grey, who had succeeded his wife’s grandfather, William, as Lord Ferrers of Groby in 1445. They indicted him for the illegal distribution of livery to several tradesmen of the town, including, incidentally, William Richmond. Ferrers’s servants, ‘by supportacioun and favour and for pleasance’ of their lord, responded by assaulting Newby and threatening other of the queen’s tenants at Leicester. Fortunately for the victims of this intimidation, they were able to call on the support of Margaret of Anjou, who held the honour of Leicester as part of her endowment. By letters patent of 20 May 1449 she ordered Ferrers to pay Newby the considerable sum of 100 marks in compensation and to ‘be goode lorde’ to him and other of her tenants. Since Newby was a sitting MP when this award was made it may be that he had forwarded his cause in Parliament. Four days later, two of Grey’s followers, Thomas Boughton* and Henry Boteler II* (the latter of whom was also an MP in this Parliament), bound themselves to Newby, each in the sum of £7 16 s. 8d., probably in connexion with payment of the compensation.12 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 256-7; CPR, 1446-52, p. 140; C145/313/13; CIMisc. viii. 213; CP40/761, rot. 208d; 763, rot. 256d.

Newby attested his last parliamentary election on 1 Mar. 1453. In the following Easter term he was sued by Sir Richard Vere for hunting without licence in his free warren at Evington near Leicester, and in Hilary term 1454 he had actions of debt of his own pending in the common pleas.13 C219/16/2; CP40/769, rot. 202d; 772, rot. 7d. He died soon afterwards. Given the frequency with which he attended the borough’s parliamentary elections, his absence from the attestors to that of 19 June 1455 implies that he was then dead; and he was certainly so by 20 Mar. 1460, when his property in Kirk Gate in the parish of St. Martin was no longer in his hands. Other scattered references show that he had also held property in the parish of St. Peter and outside the South Gate.14 C219/16/2; CCR, 1454-61, p. 457; Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, 341; Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 421.

Newby appears to have died without issue, although did have at least two wives. Nothing is known of the first, save that on 19 June 1431 the couple secured papal indults to have both a portable altar and mass celebrated before daybreak. The second was the widow of a townsman of Coventry. They were sued as a couple in Trinity term 1439 for her alleged failure to implement an award made during her widowhood.15 CPL, viii. 366, 434; CP40/713, rot. 356d; 714, rot. 116.