PALMER, Roger

If the MP was the Roger Palmer appointed bailiff of the lordships of Hammes and Sangatte in 1447, then he was probably still in post in the autumn of 1452 when he received a payment at the Exchequer on behalf of the treasurer of Calais, Gervase Clifton*, as a prest upon the wages of soldiers retained for the safe-keeping of the town.3 E403/791, m. 1. Yet no definitive proof has been found that it was the Southwark man who served across the Channel.

A relatively obscure figure in his home town, Palmer nevertheless appears to have been connected with some important individuals both in the borough and the shire. He may have lived in St. Margaret’s parish, for on 29 May 1454 he acted as a mainpernor in Chancery for John Hunt† and his fellow wardens of St. Margaret’s church who were attempting to recover property in ‘Les Stewes’ on Bankside. The property, two messuages and two cottages previously belonging to a parishioner, Thomas Palmer, had been placed in trust to provide daily prayers for the souls of Thomas and his wife. In their petition to the chancellor, the churchwardens claimed that Thomas Slyfield*, the sole surviving feoffee, had failed to comply with the conditions of the trust. Roger, who may well have been a close relation of the deceased Thomas, was one of 27 men, headed by John, Lord Berners, to whom Slyfield conveyed the disputed property two weeks earlier, perhaps to aid the process of arbitration.4 C1/24/147; CCR, 1447-54, p. 498.

Previously, in September 1452, and described as a ‘gentleman’, Palmer had been named among the recipients of the goods and chattels of John Fylson, a London fishmonger; in November 1454 he witnessed a conveyance of property in Southwark by John Gargrave*, the former marshal of the Marshalsea; and a year later he attested another gift of goods and chattels, in this instance one made by John Wright of Newington, Surrey, to William Kirton II*.5 CCR, 1447-54, p.402; 1454-61, pp. 46-47; 1461-8, p.151. In Michaelmas term 1459 he joined with the Exchequer official Thomas Pound* and his own wife Margaret, styled ‘alias Margaret Melbourne, widow’, in suing Sir Thomas Fynderne* in the court of common pleas for a debt of £27.6 CP40/795, rot. 268d. Nothing is known about the background to the suit, and there is nothing to establish a link with Fynderne save for Palmer’s speculative service in the Pas de Calais, where the knight was currently acting as lieutenant of Guînes. Nor is it possible to identify Margaret’s former husband, although he may have been the William Melbourne who had been living in Southwark in the previous year.7 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 373-4.

Palmer and Kirton, the two men elected by Southwark to the Parliament summoned to meet on 7 Oct. 1460, were both at Guildford on 17 Sept. to attest the election indenture for the county.8 C219/16/6. The Southwark return itself was merely noted on a schedule accompanying the indenture to Chancery, and the date of their election for the borough is not recorded.