NOTTE, Henry

Notte ranks among the most obscure men to represent Launceston in Parliament in the reign of Henry VI.1 Notte must be distinguished from several namesakes, including a tucker from Fardel in Cornwood, Devon, active in the 1420s (CP40/651, rot. 320; 652, rot. 1), and a yr. man who was regularly appointed to local juries at Exeter and South Molton in Devon in the 1460s: CPR, 1467-77, p. 52; C140/8/17; 8/18; 19/12; 25/36; 28/22; 28/25; 32/30; 50/41. No details of his career have been discovered, but if he was a real person, he may have been a local man, for in 1432 a Henry Notte was named as surety for Launceston’s parliamentary representatives.2 C219/14/3. It is possible that he was related to the Cornish pirate Richard Notte, whose ship, Le Nicholas, was active in the Channel in the 1450s, but no conclusive evidence to this effect has been discovered.3 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 119, 258.

There are, however, some grounds to suggest that in 1442 Launceston failed to return burgesses to Parliament. Notte’s putative colleague was the even more obscure John Hat, of whom nothing beyond his supposed return to Parliament is known. Both ‘Hat’ and ‘Notte’ were names frequently given for fictitious sureties for election returns or other legal transactions, and it is possible that the two Launceston MPs of 1442 were likewise a fiction. The sheriff’s indenture of that year has some unusual features, which may support the theory that electoral irregularities were possible. Not only was the shire election held at Launceston (rather than Lostwithiel) for the first time since 1422, but it was attested by the unusually large number of 196 individuals and recorded only the election of the knights of the shire, rather than also naming the representatives of the county’s parliamentary boroughs, as was customary.4 C219/15/2.