SEMAN, Robert

This Robert Seman may have been related to a namesake who in 1425, when aged over 50, testified at the proof of age for Robert, son and heir of Thomas Tauk, by saying that he remembered the date of Robert’s birth in 1404 as his own son William, an ordained priest, had celebrated his first mass in Chidham church on Chichester harbour on the same day.4 C139/26/42. There remains some uncertainty as to which of the two men appeared as a juror in Chichester at an inquiry about ownership of the nearby manor of Kingsham in 1422 and at the post mortem of Edmund, earl of March, held in the city three years later,5 C145/302/3; C139/18/32. and was appointed as a tax collector in Sussex on two subsequent occasions. There is no doubt, however, that Robert Seman the MP was a tanner by trade, and that in November 1430 he was among the ‘free and lawful men of Chichester’ whom the royal searcher of ships in the port asked to put a value on a consignment of smuggled goods he had confiscated.6 E122/183/10. By 1435 Seman possessed a house in the North Street of the city, and he was often called upon to witness the deeds of other inhabitants of Chichester in the 1430s and 1440s.7 Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxxix. 133-5.

In the autumn of 1441 Seman, who had been elected one of the two constables of the local staple in 1439, quarreled with his senior colleague, a butcher named Thomas atte Wode who had been established in the office for 14 years. So acrimonious did their relations become that atte Wode went so far as to accuse Seman of uttering treasonable words about Henry VI. He formally made his appeal at a view of frankpledge held before the mayor and chief bailiff of Chichester on 6 Nov., in which he asserted that on 25 Apr. 1440 in a hostelry known as The Tabard Seman had said that ‘the Kyng oure soverain lord was no kyng ne noon sholde be and that sholde be knowe in short tyme’. Both the accused and the accuser (who promised to reveal more when he came before the King himself), were arrested and placed in the city gaol, while the mayor notified the Council. The two men were brought before the King’s bench six days later, and committed to the Marshalsea prison. On 23 Nov., however, Seman was allowed his freedom on sureties provided by his superior, William Hore I* the mayor of the staple, two prominent local lawyers, John Hilly* and Humphrey Heuster*, and a fellow tanner named John Stere, who guaranteed his appearance in court in the Hilary term following. From then the case was adjourned until Michaelmas term 1442, with Heuster and Thomas Elyot, a ‘gentleman’ from Wonersh in Surrey and filacer in the King’s bench, standing surety for Seman, who thus remained at liberty while his accuser atte Wode languished in the Marshalsea. Meanwhile, in the Easter term the justices had ordered the Sussex j.ps. to send them any indictments made before them in which Seman stood charged of treason or felony, or, if there were none, to hold an inquiry as to his reputation in the neighbourhood of Chichester. They returned in the Michaelmas term that the inquest jury knew nothing evil about him. Since nobody had any other accusations to make against Seman in King’s bench he went sine die. Atte Wode’s fate is not recorded.8 Suss. N. and Q. xiv. 117-19.

As the outcome of his trial reveals, Seman was generally well regarded in the locality. He continued to occupy the post of constable of the staple without break, serving for 12 years altogether, and it was while so doing that he was returned to Parliament in 1449. Before that date he had taken on the executorships of the wills of two of Chichester’s leading citizens. Together with his former mainpernor, John Stere, he acted as an executor for Henry Grenelef*, the one-time mayor, and as such brought suits in the years 1445-7 in the common pleas to recover debts owed to Grenelef’s estate.9 CP40/738, rot. 13d; Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxxix. 137. Then too, he remained on good terms with William Hore, both when it came to public matters and in their private ones. In April 1447 he was one of the four wardens of the newly-created guild of St. George in Chichester, who together with Hore, as mayor of the city and ex officio master of the guild, received a grant of land for the endowment of St. George’s chantry in the cathedral, and when Hore made his will in the following year he named Seman as an executor. This executorship not only brought him additional business to pursue in the law courts over a period of some eight years or more, but also led to a dispute with his one-time bailsman, John Hilly. Hore had allegedly got Hilly arraigned as a felon and put in prison, and his executors made Hilly’s troubles the worse by suing him for £200 contained in a bond.10 Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxxix. 137; CP40/779, rot. 43d; 780, rot. 11; C1/75/45.

In October 1450 Seman was to be distrained to appear in the common pleas as a juror in a suit brought by John Pierrepont esquire, one of the collectors of customs at Chichester, against a gentleman from West Wittering.11 CP40/759, rot. 264d. On the death of his neighbour John Fust* a few months later he was elected in his place as mayor of the staple, an office he held for nearly three years. After his mayoral term ended Seman continued to be involved in the work of the staple, for it was a ‘law man of the stapull of Chichester’, that in 1458 he was required to testify at a hearing conducted by commissioners appointed by the chancellor to investigate precisely what Fust had said while lying on his deathbed. The matter at issue was the terms of an enfeoffment, but Seman could offer little testimony to show whether the dying man had wanted his widow or his son to have the property in dispute. When he had visited Fust three or four days before he died nothing had been revealed about his intentions; all Seman could do was repeat a rumour (‘a noyse among the pepull’).12 C1/28/504. Meanwhile, Seman had attested the Chichester elections to Parliament on 26 Feb. 1453, and he did so again on 22 Sept. 1460.13 C219/16/2, 6. He is last recorded, as a witness to a deed dated in the city, in July 1470.14 W. Suss. RO, Diocesan recs., Cap. I/17/56.