SEE, John del

John del See was from a family long associated with Grimsby and, before its decline in the mid fourteenth century, the rival port of Ravenser Odd on the opposite bank of the river Humber. In 1315 a namesake gave a messuage in Grimsby to the house of Augustinian friars there, and Peter del See, a patron of the same house, served as mayor of the borough in the 1340s. Other members of the family represented Ravenser Odd in the Parliaments of 1305, 1327 (Sept.) and 1337 (Sept.).4 CCR, 1313-17, p. 294; 1340-3, p. 488; VCH Lincs. ii. 218; HMC 14th Rep. VIII, 288. Details of our MP’s own career are scanty. As a younger son he had little to look forward to by way of inheritance. The first reference to him occurs in 1410 when, probably by purchase, he acquired some lands in Grimsby from one Robert Lordyng, and he added to these from the same source in 1412. At about the same time he was defending an action sued against him by the church of St. Mary for rent owed from a stall next to the churchyard of the other borough church, St. James’s.5 HMC 14th Rep. VIII, 258; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. vi. 31. On 9 Mar. 1416, in company with his elder brother, Brian, he attested, for the first and only time, the parliamentary return for the county. It was probably at about this time that he was sued in Chancery by his neighbour, Thomas Missenden of Healing, along with other feoffees of Missenden’s father, for failing to make estate to the plaintiff of lands in Healing.6 Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. i. 70; C1/5/11.

In the Michaelmas term of 1423 it was del See’s turn to act as a plaintiff: as his father’s executor he sued a ‘wolbrogger’ in the court of common pleas for a debt of £40. This is one of several references which indicate that he had trading interests. Although generally styled as ‘of Little Coates, gentleman’, he was described as ‘of Grimsby, merchant’ in several debt actions in the same court in the 1430s. He was also an active litigant in the borough court: in the late 1440s he appears on several occasions as a plaintiff there with his son Stephen acting as his attorney.7 CP40/651, rot. 183; 685, rot. 313d; 710, rot. 224d; 712, rot. 144; Grimsby ct. rolls 1/101, 24, 28 Hen. VI. Further, in January 1432, while serving on the mayor’s council, he was one of the ten Grimsby burgesses who submitted their quarrel over two ships from Bishop’s Lynn, which they had recaptured from the French, to the arbitration of the local lawyer John Langholm I*.8 Grimsby ct. rolls 1/101, 10 Hen. VI.

These maritime interests served as a useful supplement to del See’s landed income, which was assessed in 1436 at £5 p.a. (compared with his elder brother’s £18 p.a.).9 E179/136/198. He contributed 3s. to the expenses of Grimsby’s representatives in the Parliament of November 1449, and such a relatively large contribution suggests he was one of the principal landholders in the borough. This supposition is supported by the extent of 1491 where the del See estate was described as the third largest.10 Grimsby assessments for parlty. expenses 1/612/1 (formerly 1/800/1); C219/16/1; E. Gillett, Grimsby, 4. None the less, although he had significant interests in Grimsby, he played relatively little part in its administration. Although he represented it in Parliament he did so only once, and it was not until late in his life that he held one of the main borough officers, serving as bailiff in 1450-1. He probably died soon after the conclusion of his term. His sons played a more prominent part in the town’s affairs. Two of them, Peter and Stephen, were mayors in the 1470s and 1480s, and Stephen stood, albeit unsuccessfully, as a parliamentary candidate at the elections of January 1484 and October 1485. Another son, Edmund, was educated at Cambridge and became rector of St. Michael’s in Wood Street, London, before his death in 1479.11 C219/15/1; HMC 14th Rep. VIII, 289; Bull. IHR, xlii. 219; Biog. Reg. Univ. Cambridge to 1500 ed. Emden, 516. More interesting is the career of our MP’s nephew, Sir Martin del See (d.1494) of Barmston in Holderness. The colourful story of his resistance to Edward IV in March 1471 is told by the Burgundian chronicler Waurin.12 Test. Ebor. iv (Surtees Soc. liii), 100-1; J. de Waurin, Chrons. ed. Hardy, v. 643-4, 646-7.