NEWERK, Henry

At the time of Newerk’s return to the Parliament of 1447 the burgesses of Devizes were still regularly in the habit of returning local men, preferably those with an interest in the cloth trade, and the reasons behind the choice of this outright carpet-bagger remain obscure. Nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt that he was a candidate acceptable to the local community, for among the sureties for his attendance at Bury St. Edmunds was the leading Devizes clothier William Hendelove*, who would himself represent his neighbours two years later, while Newerk’s parliamentary colleague was the local cloth-maker Robert Ismell*.2 C219/15/4. In the absence of any evidence of political connexions that might explain Henry’s desire to sit in Parliament, it may be assumed that the governors of Devizes (like those of urban constituencies elsewhere in England) struggled to find local men willing to travel to the Suffolk backwater where the Commons were to meet.

Newerk’s parentage has not been discovered, but by the time of his first appearance in the records he was evidently well established at East Greenwich in Kent. No evidence of his education has come to light, and even the frequency with which he was called upon by his neighbours to serve as a feoffee, executor or trustee cannot be taken for definite proof that he was a professional man of law. Equally, the extent of his property is uncertain, but while his normal residence was in East Greenwich, it may have included a tenement in the London parish of All Hallows, Bread Street, which had previously belonged to John Doland.3 E326/1967-9, 5737.

Generally, Newerk’s activities were narrowly focused on the Greenwich area of Kent, and only occasionally on the city of London: those who entrusted him with the custody of their goods included Greenwich men like William Leeke and Thomas Fetherston (the latter a freeman of the London Vintners’ Company).4 CCR, 1447-54, p. 341; 1454-61, pp. 118, 206; 1461-8, no. 392; E211/512/J, M; PCC 12 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 95); Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, f. 172; CP25(1)/116/321/691; Surrey RO, Loseley mss, LM/341/70. Their often tangled affairs kept Newerk occupied in the law courts for lengthy stretches of time. Thus, Robert Cheseman had provided that certain property of his in East Greenwich should after his death pass first to his widow, Emma, and subsequently to their son, Thomas, but that immediately following Emma’s decease a female servant, Agnes Gnatte, should enjoy a life interest. Over the course of the first five years of Edward IV’s reign, the interested parties successively appeared before Chancellor Neville to demand that Newerk should honour their respective claims.5 C1/28/179; 29/298-9; C253/35/185, 187; 38/328. Not long after, it was the family of Richard Jueller, a Greenwich man with holdings throughout Kent for whom Newerk had acted as feoffee, whose squabbles engulfed him. Jueller’s widowed daughter-in-law, Agnes, claimed that under the terms of the deceased man’s will certain lands in Lee should have come to her for her life, with remainder to her two daughters, but John Ery of Deptford, the husband of Jueller’s daughter Margery, asserted in 1466 that he had bought the property from his father-in-law for the sum of £20.6 C1/31/90-95; C253/40/53. Ery may have been the same man as the John Erhith with whom Newerk had served some years earlier as co-executor of the will of Philip Dene of Woolwich: Reg. Stafford, f. 172. Other protracted litigation arose in 1468 from the claim of Thomas Thowe for payment of a debt of £44 5s. 4d. from the proceeds of the sale of the lands of John Mayhew of Strood.7 C1/40/206-9; C253/42/380.

Throughout the mid fifteenth-century Kent was a hotbed of popular unrest. In the summer of 1450 a majority of Jack Cade’s rebels hailed from the county, and two decades later, in the dying days of the Lancastrian Readeption, the Bastard of Fauconberg succeeded in stirring up London’s south-eastern hinterland in a last-ditch effort to prevent Edward IV from re-gaining the throne. On both occasions royal commissioners were dispatched into the county to mete out summary justice, and it seems that each time Newerk, as a prominent inhabitant of East Greenwich, was caught in the net. Thus, in July 1450 he and his wife were among eight named individuals who headed the grant of a general pardon collectively purchased by the townsfolk,8 CPR, 1446-52, p. 356. and in November 1471 he was likewise pardoned for any offences committed before 7 July that year, as ‘one of the inhabitants of the hundred of Blackheath’.9 CPR, 1467-77, p. 303. While it is possible that, particularly on the latter occasion, he had in some way become implicated in the disturbances, the pardons were distributed too widely to provide conclusive evidence of an individual’s guilt.

Newerk survived for several more years, and is last heard of in December 1479, still serving as one of the feoffees of the Cheseman estates.10 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 363.