RUGG, Ralph

Ralph probably belonged to the family of Rukke or Rugg recorded as dwelling at Angmering on the coast of west Sussex in the 1420s.3 One of whose members, Alice, da. of John Rukke, was allegedly killed together with her unborn child by the lawyer John Hilly* on a Chichester street in 1422: KB27/651, rot. 15, 652, rot. 51d, 655, rex rot. 5d. Forty years later, in Feb. 1462, Ralph witnessed the will made by Hilly’s son: W. Suss. RO, Add. mss, 3188. He himself took up residence a few miles away at Chichester, where he first came to prominence in the spring of 1447 as one of the four wardens of the newly-formed guild of St. George. The guild had been formally incorporated less than a year earlier, by letters patent of 13 May 1446, with the mayor of Chichester as its master, and on St. George’s day 1447 the mayor, William Hore I*, and wardens (Rugg among them) received a grant of land for endowment of their chantry in the cathedral.4 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 461-2; Chichester archs. CHICTY/AY/70. Later that year Rugg was elected as a reeve in the city, and after his term ended he continued to fill an undefined role in the civic heirarchy. As such, he attested the parliamentary indentures drawn up in Chichester on 26 Feb. 1453, 22 Sept. 1460 and 25 Sept. 1472.5 C219/16/2, 6, 17/2.

Rugg’s fellow MP in the Parliament which assembled at Coventry in November 1459 was Richard Myldewe*, a merchant who had recently been mayor of the staple at Chichester. Of his own trading activities little is mentioned in the surviving records, and the suits for debt that he brought in the court of common pleas in 1449 against men from Harting in west Sussex and from further away in Hampshire concerned only modest sums of money.6 CP40/753 rot. 46.