PACY, William

A draper by trade, Pacy appears as an obscure figure, but his two terms as mayor of Leicester and his admittance, at an unknown date, to the prestigious guild of the Holy Trinity of Coventry, shows that he was of more substance than the surviving records allow.1 Reg. Guild Holy Trin. Coventry (Dugdale Soc. xiii), 98. He first appears in September 1417 when a feoffee of lands in Great Easton near Uppingham, and although he is described as ‘of Leicester’ in this deed of feoffment it may be that Great Easton was his place of origin for there is no trace of the Pacy family in Leicester before his time.2 Leics. RO, Conant mss, DG11/143-4. A year later, when presumably still a relatively young man, he was elected to the mayoralty, and he had only recently surrendered the office when he headed the attestors to the parliamentary election of 28 Sept. 1419. It is in this latter role that he has made the greatest impression on the records. He attested five further elections between 10 Apr. 1421 and 29 Nov. 1436. On the last occasion he joined two other townsmen, John Church I* and William Newby*, in standing surety for the attendance of both the county and the borough MPs.3 Leicester Bor. Recs. ed. Bateson, ii. 448; C219/12/3, 5; 13/2, 4; 14/5; 15/1.

By the summer of 1439 Pacy was acting as an executor for a prominent townsman, Ralph Brasier alias Humberston*. His own death followed not long afterwards. The last reference to Pacy dates from 16 Nov. 1443, when along with William Grantham*, Richard Neel* and Adam Racy*, he was named as a feoffee of a wealthy saddler, Thomas Gaddesby. He was presumably dead by May 1446, when John Pacy, who is very likely to have been his son, first appears as a witness in the town’s records. William Pacy of Great Easton, named in a deed of 1463, may have been another son or else a grandson.4 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 421; Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, 346; Conant mss, DG11/194.