SAXE, William

Originally from Fakenham in Suffolk, Saxe became a freeman of Colchester in 1430-1.2 Colchester bor. recs., ‘Oath bk.’, D/B 5 R1, f. 85. It is possible that he lived in East Street where he owned a tenement.3 Ct. roll 1439-40, D/B 5 Cr57, m. 27d. Among his associates in the borough were John Trewe*, who appointed him an executor of his will, and John Baron I*, for whom he acted as a feoffee. Along with Trewe’s widow and son, he won a suit for debt in the borough court against Richard Gibbes during the mid 1450s.4 Ct. rolls 1444-5, 1447-8, 1455-6, D/B 5 Cr60, m. 24d; 62, mm. 22d-23; 66, m. 10d. In the same period, John Stone and Emma his wife sued Saxe in Chancery over a messuage in the town that she had inherited from her father, John Kyng. The Stones claimed that Saxe and John Baker were the surviving feoffees of the property in question and were refusing to make a release to them, but Saxe and Baker denied that they held any such interest in it.5 C1/23/9; 24/105. Saxe was again involved in litigation in the borough court in 1459, when William Norton and Marion his wife sued him for unjustly detaining a pyx and bag containing deeds and other muniments. He responded by declaring that he had always been willing to hand them over and the court fined the Nortons for bringing an unjust suit, although it upheld their ownership of the articles in question.6 Ct. rolls 1458-9, 1459-60, D/B 5 Cr69, m. 22d; 70, m. 3d. On another occasion Saxe was involved in trying to resolve a quarrel, since in the early 1450s he was among those whom the borough court appointed to arbitrate between William Bonefaunt of Colchester and William Salkyn.7 Ibid. 1451-2, D/B 5 Cr64, m. 28.

Saxe began to play a part in the affairs of the borough within a few years of becoming a burgess there. In September 1436 he was one of the electors of Colchester’s coroners, clavigers, town clerk and serjeants, and six years later he became a councillor. He subsequently held all the other principal offices in the borough. During his first term as bailiff John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, wrote to his fellow bailiff, William Lecche*, and other prominent burgesses ‘pro Willelmi Saxe’, but the contents of the duke’s letter are unknown. Saxe entered his only Parliament in 1455 and he was still an MP when (between the first and second sessions of this assembly) he began his third term as bailiff. He was again elected bailiff on 30 June 1457, as a replacement for John Beche* who had died three days earlier, and he was re-elected to the same office at the expiry of this short term in the following September. He disappears from view after the 1450s, and he was certainly dead by August 1464.8 Ibid. 1436-7, 1456-7, 1466-7, D/B 5 Cr54, m. 1; 67, m. 23d; 73, m. 28d; ‘Oath bk.’, D/B 5 R1, f. 94d.