SPERK, John

Sperk hailed from Tregony in the west of the county. He is first heard of in May 1419, when – styled a mere yeoman – he received a royal pardon for his failure to appear in court to answer charges of trespass brought against him by the justice Sir Robert Hill†.2 CPR, 1416-22, p. 222. In this supposed offence he had been associated with a local bailiff, William Priour of Mitchell, and it is conceivable that he had come into conflict with Hill while acting as one of the bailiff’s servants. Certainly, he did from time to time function as one of the lesser cogs in the government’s administrative machinery, as in 1421, when he is found delivering summonses to court to various members of the Cornish gentry on behalf of the sheriff.3 CPR, 1416-22, pp. 378, 379. Such menial functions nevertheless seem to have brought Sperk to the attention of the authorities, and from Michaelmas 1428 he served as sub-bailiff of the stannary of Blackmore to the duchy of Cornwall’s bailiff, William Alcock.4 Duchy of Cornw. Off., DCO 46. He may already have been active in duchy service some time earlier, when he (then styled ‘of Lostwithiel, bailly’) had arrested one Richard Billioun at Bodmin, and taken him to the duchy’s prison at Lostwithiel.5 CP40/670, rot. 234d. The stannary court over which Sperk presided in Alcock’s absence also sat at Lostwithiel, the administrative headquarters of the duchy, and his official duties soon made him a familiar figure in the borough, and unquestionably played a part in securing his election to Parliament in 1431.

Few other details of Sperk’s career have been discovered. He was present at the shire elections at Lostwithiel both in 1426, when he set his seal to the sheriff’s indenture, and in 1433, when he was one of the two men who found surety for the attendance of the knights of the shire.6 C219/13/4; 14/4. The date of his death is obscure.7 The John Spark who served as a mounted man-at-arms in the retinue of Robert, Lord Willoughby, in 1432 and was present at the siege of Conches in 1435 must have been a different man: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr 25770/677; 25772/980, 988.