TAME, William

A fishmonger by trade,2 CP40/746, rot. 512d. Tame was a defendant in at least three Exchequer suits relating to his time as a bailiff of Cambridge. The plaintiff in the first, John Hynton of Cambridgeshire, brought his case against Tame and his co-bailiffs of 1443-4, John Bunne, John Neell and Benedict Morys, in November 1444, shortly after the end of their term. He claimed that a servant of his had deserted him after Tame, in his guise as bailiff, had assaulted and intimidated that employee a year previously. The plaintiff in the second suit, a case likewise connected with Tame’s first term as bailiff, was John Hesewell†. In a bill of February 1445, Hesewell stated that he had begun an action for debt against Peter Grey at Cambridge the previous April. According to Hesewell, the bailiffs’ deputy had arrested Grey in June 1444 for failing to appear in the borough court, only for the bailiffs to release him, the debt still unpaid, two weeks later. Tame and his co-defendants twice obtained licence to treat with Hesewell out of court before pleading, in Trinity term 1445, that Grey had never been in their custody.3 E13/143, rots. 4, 19. The third Exchequer suit was brought by William Cotton*, keeper of the great wardrobe, against Tame and his co-bailiffs of 1450-1, John Bunne, Thomas Fordam and John Lawe, in Hilary term 1452. In his bill, Cotton said that he spent £10 of his own money while carrying out his duties as keeper. To repay him, the King had assigned to him a year’s instalment of the annual rent of £10 that the university of Cambridge paid the Crown for the right to hold the assize of bread and ale at Cambridge. Cotton complained that the defendants had refused to accept his Exchequer tally; they replied that the rent had already been assigned to the King’s household. Cotton returned that, as wardrober, he was entitled to receive sums allotted for Household expenses. Unlike the previous two suits, this case certainly reached a conclusion in court. In the following Easter term, the barons of the Exchequer found for Cotton and ordered the defendants to pay him the £10 in question, along with 10s. in damages and expenses.4 E13/145A, rots. 32d, 33d; PROME, xii. 87; VCH Cambs. iii. 155.

The records of the court of common pleas show that Tame was also a defendant in a case that reached pleadings there in Trinity term 1447. The plaintiff, a merchant named Thomas Kyrkeby, alleged that he and 16 co-defendants, including William Mate* and Simon Rankyn*, had illegally maintained a suit brought by Richard Togood* in the borough court at Cambridge. Following out of court negotiations between the parties, there were further pleadings in Easter term 1448. At this point the parties agreed to a trial by jury but the case was still pending a year later.5 CP40/746, rot. 512d; 749, rot. 117.

Having sat in his only known Parliament, Tame remained active at Cambridge until at least the mid 1450s, disappearing from view after completing his final, apparently uneventful, term as a bailiff in 1456.