YOUNG, John

Young was one of two sons of a wealthy Bristol merchant, Thomas Young, who at some point before 1408 had married the widow of another prominent Bristolian, John Canynges. The already close relationship between the Young and Canynges families, forged through this marriage, was further strengthened when Thomas Young took on the guardianship of Canynges’s children, who included Thomas, the future mayor of London, and his brother William, who was to become five times mayor of Bristol and one of the most successful merchants of his day.12 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 939-40; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. xv (2), 228-30.

John Young probably came to London soon after the death of his father, and like his half-brother Thomas Canynges before him became a member of the Grocers’ Company. It is likely that the road to London from Bristol had already been trodden by members of his family, although it is unclear what his connexion, if any, was with the Youngs who were active as grocers in the capital in the late fourteenth century.13 S.L. Thrupp, Merchant Class Med. London, 377. It is not known whether John entered upon an apprenticeship, or whether he obtained the freedom of London by redemption, but he was certainly established in the city and its hunterland by November 1432 when he was a feoffee of property in the parishes of St. Martin in the Fields and St. Margaret in Westminster, at the nomination of Thomas Brown II*.14 CCR, 1429-35, p. 229; 1435-41, p. 115.

By the late 1430s Brown had become increasingly favoured in government circles, with the result that he was frequently able to obtain royal licences enabling him to further his own business ventures. This set him at odds with many in London, particularly with members of the Grocers’ Company, who were outraged at the commercial advantages he was able to secure. Moreover, Brown now availed himself of a royal commission to investigate customs evasions. In the early months of 1438 Young, Canynges and a number of other London merchants, including William Melreth* and William Cottesbroke*, fell victim to a series of malicious allegations concerning their mercantile activities. On 19 Feb. 1438 it was found by an inquisition, headed by Brown, that on the previous 15 July Canynges and Young had exported 200 woollen cloths and tin worth 400 marks from Queenborough to Zeeland without paying customs. Young was further alleged to have exported 2,000 nobles of English gold without licence. While Canynges admitted taking the goods on board, he claimed that he had paid customs in London. Young not only denied his guilt but protested that the charges had been heard before their enemies and ill-wishers. In October 1439 the two half-brothers and business partners, like all their fellow accused, eventually obtained royal pardons in respect of these allegations.15 Nightingale, 451-2; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 339-40.

Despite these setbacks, Young rapidly expanded his own business interests and during the 1440s and 1450s rose to become one of the most prominent merchants in London, as well as a merchant of the Calais staple. Central to his career was his membership of the Grocers’ Company, of which he was to serve as warden for two terms, as well as a further year at the head of the company. The date of his admission to the Grocers’ livery is not recorded, although it is clear that he had attained it by the late 1440s. In 1448-9, the year when he frist served as warden of the company, he contributed 13s. 4d. to a levy raised for the defence of Calais, a cause dear to his heart and those of his fellow liverymen.16 Ms. Archs. Grocers’ Co. ii. 301, 347; Nightingale, 496. Young’s involvement in the export trade in wool brought him into close contact with fellow grocers such as Richard Lee* and William Marowe*, as well as cementing his links with other staplers, such as William Venour and Robert White: in the early 1450s, the latter, as mayor of the staple, was at the forefront of the staplers’ efforts to secure the repayment of the hefty loans they had made to the Crown. Young’s own dealings during the 1440s and 1450s are not especially well-documented, although he is known to have had commercial relations with Italian merchants, and in 1451 he was forced by lack of storage space for his wool to rent more room for it at Grocers’ Hall. That same year he was chosen by the court of aldermen, along with John Harowe* and Geoffrey Boleyn*, to supervise the raising of a large sum of money for the defence of Calais, a cause which by that time was uppermost in the minds of many of London’s leading merchants.17 Ms. Archs. Grocers’ Co. ii. 317; jnl. 5, f. 58v; CPR, 1452-61, p. 529; E159/235, recorda Trin. rot. 11; Eng. Trade in 15th Cent. ed. Power and Postan, 368; Nightingale, 434. Like many grocers Young used the profits from his dealings in wool to import a range of commodities: in the late 1440s he brought consignments as diverse as wire, canvas, linen and herrings into the port of London.18 E122/72/23, ff. 18v, 21, 24. In 1457 he and William Canynges were among the investors in an expedition mounted by Robert Sturmy from Southampton in which a cargo of spices, alum, wine and other goods, valued at more than £20,000, was brought back from the Mediterranean. The ships were seized by pirates, but in England blame was laid upon the Genoese, prompting the Crown to issue an order, later countermanded by the lords, to seize their goods in London and Southampton. Young’s involvement in the wine trade continued until shortly before his death when he used an Italian broker to supply a quantity of malvesey to a London draper. His dealings with the continent may well have been assisted by membership of the society of Merchant Adventurers, with whom he seems to have been associated from 1450 or before.19 Nightingale, 443, 507-11; C1/32/327.

Unlike some other members of his company, Young did not build up an extensive network of provincial contacts during the course of his business activities. Rather, he seems to have concentrated upon his dealings in London, particularly with fellow grocers and merchants of the staple. Among his partners was Stephen Forster*, with whom he was associated in 1447 in a transaction worth just over £103 which involved Richard Lee and the latter’s son-in-law, John Mitchell.20 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 108. This concentration of his business interests also found reflection in the ‘gifts’ of goods and chattels that were made to him and others as part of credit arrangements. The vast majority of these were made by fellow grocers, such as the future alderman John Plomer (in 1455) and John Wood, a merchant of the staple (1474). Young’s partners in these transactions included other prominent Londoners, such as the mercer Ralph Verney* and the grocer George Ireland†, another of Lee’s sons-in-law.21 Ibid. 166, 185; 1458-82, pp. 159, 168, 170; CCR, 1435-41, p. 477; 1447-54, p. 167; 1454-61, pp. 75, 106. His dealings were not always straightforward, however, and a particularly serious dispute arose in the early 1470s between Young and John Crosby†, his former apprentice. Details of the quarrel are sketchy, but it apparently centred on payments for quantities of wool. Rather than being settled discreetly within the confines of the Grocers’ Company, the matter was aired publicly using ‘opprobrious and scandalous words’, and had to be resolved by the court of aldermen.22 Guildhall Lib. London, Grocers’ Co. wardens’ accts., 11571/1, f. 4; Nightingale, 475, 541.

Young’s successful career as a merchant enabled him to build up a substantial portfolio of property holdings. As a younger son he had only a reversionary interest in his father’s extensive property in Bristol, and this was probably one of the reasons why he moved to London. The same was true of holdings which his mother Joan had brought with her from her marriage to John Canynges, and in this case the two Canynges brothers were first in line after her death in 1429.23 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 939-40. Yet he maintained a connexion with the port, and indeed owned property there, on however modest a scale, and in 1440 he was appointed to levy and collect a tax there.24 Little Red Bk. Bristol ed. Bickley, ii. 132-3. The extent of Young’s holdings in London is difficult to determine: the only ones mentioned in his will were three messuages in the parish of St. Michael Paternoster which had been forfeited to the Crown and granted to Young in July 1472. These were valuable, said to be worth some £20 a year on Young’s death in 1481. Prior to their acquisition there is evidence that he was living in the parish of St. Botolph Billingsgate in the mid 1460s.25 CPR, 1461-7, p. 482; C140/83/24; C1/31/501. His London holdings aside, from the late 1450s onwards Young also acquired property in Hertfordshire, Essex and Kent. In April 1458 lands and rents in Chesthunt, Waltham Cross and elsewhere in Hertfordshire were granted by Isabel, widow of John Ledes*, and her feoffees to Young, Agnes his wife, and their assigns. The property in Chesthunt almost certainly included the manor of ‘Le Mote’ which Young held at his death. Just over two years later, in the autumn of 1460, he purchased the manors of Ifield, Welles and Cosyngton in Northfleet in Kent, obtaining final confirmation of the transaction in June 1461, following the accession of Edward IV.26 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 286-7, 485-6; 1461-8, pp. 68-69. It is unclear which, if any, of Young’s holdings were acquired by marriage, although he and his second wife were jointly seised of estates in Enfield in Middlesex and Pentwich in Hertfordshire, entailed on Joan’s heirs, indicating that they had belonged to her family.27 Cal. P. and M. London, 1458-82, p. 153.

The close familial and mercantile links enjoyed by Young fed into his growing prominence as a figure on London’s civic stage, and in particular his political affiliations. He began his public career in July 1447 when he was chosen to represent the city in a dispute, probably with the see of London, involving the church of St. Stephen Walbrook.28 Jnl. 4, f. 184. In the autumn of 1449 he was chosen one of the city’s four auditors, the customary stepping-stone to higher office within civic government, and in November the same year he attested the election of London’s MPs. The beginnings of his civic career coincided with the establishment of links between Young and his brothers and the duke of York: in 1448-9 he and William Canynges acted on York’s behalf in relation to a mortgage of property at Easton in Gloucestershire, property in which Thomas Young was to acquire a life interest. If anyone was in doubt over the alignment of the Young and Canynges brothers with York’s interest, this was dispelled during the Parliament of 1450-1, when Thomas Young presented a petition in which he called for the duke to be declared as Henry VI’s next heir. Thomas was rapidly consigned to the Tower for his audacious demand, leaving his brother John as well as their Canynges siblings in a vulnerable position. The effect of these events on John’s career are nevertheless difficult to gage: a few months later, in mid July 1451, he was appointed to a city committee concerned with the affairs of Calais, but by contrast at the same time his candidacy for the aldermanry of Dowgate Ward was rejected. It is just possible that this had something to do with his family’s connexions, although failure to be elected as an alderman at the first attempt was not uncommon, even for the most successful merchants.29 Nightingale, 491-4; jnl. 5, f. 60.

Further appointments to city committees followed over the next few years, but in the meantime Young’s ties with the duke of York proved beneficial to himself and his fellow merchants when the King became incapacitated by illness and York assumed the reins of government as Protector. In the spring of 1454, it fell to him to pay into the Exchequer on behalf of the Grocers’ Company the sum of 100 marks ‘for safe garde of the beem’ (a tax imposed by the Crown on all goods weighed by grocers at the city’s ‘Beam’), a sum made up of contributions from no fewer than 80 freemen of the craft. The choice of Young, soon to be picked again as one of the wardens, may well have reflected the fact that the Grocers’ hoped to use any influence that he had with the Protector in order to bolster their efforts in Parliament to have the tax removed.30 Jnl. 5, ff. 97v, 100, 240v; Nightingale, 496; Ms. Archs. Grocers’ Co. 325-7, 347. In July that year Young was appointed as a customs collector in the port of Bristol, a post he was to hold for just under a year. It had been during the Parliament of 1453-4 (recently dissolved), that the Calais staplers began pressing for the repayment of loans made by them to the Crown. This also formed a vital element in the negotiations which York, while Protector, entered into with the merchants in order to secure the acceptance of the earl of Warwick as captain of Calais. His efforts initially came to nothing, but with his victory at the battle of St. Albans in the spring of 1455 another opportunity presented itself. Parliament was summoned to meet on 9 July, and it is striking that London chose as its representatives four merchants of the Calais staple: Young, Harowe, William Cantelowe* and Geoffrey Feldyng*. Negotiations between Crown and staplers began again in earnest, but dragged on until the spring of 1456 when a deal was brokered that enabled Warwick to take up his post and the staplers to secure finance for the defence of Calais and the repayment of their loans.31 G.L. Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais’, EHR, lxxv. 41-51. Young’s part in these events was probably a fairly minor one: unlike his fellow MPs for London he was not among those staplers who had made substantial loans to the Crown during the 1440s: his only advance of cash appears to have been the £40 which was the subject of an order authorizing repayment by assignment in March 1455. Yet it is possible that his links with York fulfilled a useful role during the negotiations.32 E403/801, m. 2.

Between the first and second sessions of the Parliament Young was elected one of the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, a breach in spirit at least of the statute prohibiting the return to the Commons of serving sheriffs. Young’s shrievalty was to be an eventful one, for in late April 1456 serious rioting broke out in London, directed against the Italian community. Much of the resentment stemmed from the Crown’s continued policy of granting licences to Italian merchants enabling them to ship wool by routes other than through Calais. Young and his fellow sheriff were caught up in the disturbances, as they and the mayor, William Marowe, were accosted by a mob of young mercers who were angry at the imprisonment of one of their number for an attack on Alessandro Palastrelli in Cheapside. The rioters then ‘by fforce delivered theyr ffelaw oute of prison’.33 J.L. Bolton, ‘ London and the Crown’, London Jnl. xii. 12-14. Clearly Young, as a stapler, would have appreciated the concerns of the Londoners, but as sheriff he was required to round up the trouble-makers and report to the commissions that were set up to investigate the riots. To protect his own position he eventually (in 1458) secured a royal pardon as a former sheriff.34 C67/42, m. 40.

Young was a candidate for the aldermannic bench once again in March 1458 when he was among those presented by the ward of Farringdon Without. The election by the aldermen was delayed for a few days after it transpired that procedures had been incorrectly followed, and when it took place Young was once again passed over in favour of another candidate.35 Jnl. 6, f. 194v. Over the course of the next 18 months the political situation worsened, and there is evidence that the Crown began to take action against those merchants in London, many of them staplers, who were in some way identified with opposition to the government. Among the targets of this campaign of intimidation were the Young and Canynges brothers, as well as other grocers, and they found themselves prosecuted for giving illegal credit to aliens, a breach of a statute passed in 1430. In the summer of 1459, Young himself was accused of selling 26 ½ sacks of wool worth £135 13s. 4d. to Antonio Lutyan in exchange for 36 butts of malmsey, and on 12 Sept. secured a royal pardon.36 E159/235, recorda Trin. rot. 11; Nightingale, 507-11; CPR, 1452-61, p. 529. Events on the national stage now took a dramatic turn, as York and his Neville allies were driven into exile, and Parliament was charged with their attainder. Conscious of the court party’s new ascendancy, the city of London sent a delegation to Henry VI to assure him of the citizens’ loyalty.37 Jnl. 6, f. 145. Closer to home, in February 1460 Thomas Young was arrested once again and imprisoned on charges of treason. He was bailed the following month, but only after John, together with other well-wishers, had entered into bonds for £1,000 to produce him in Chancery when required. Over the next few months Thomas made several appearances in Chancery, but by November, when he was finally released without charge, the political situtation had changed dramatically.38 Nightingale, 513; CCR, 1454-61, p. 420.

The Yorkists’ invasion and their victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460 was undoubtedly welcomed by many inhabitants of London, even though the city as a whole remained outwardly cautious. Soon afterwards Young and Thomas Canynges were, unusually, chosen jointly to serve as one of the two ‘aldermen’ of the Grocers’ Company. The position was normally reserved for members of the company who had been elected to the civic court of aldermen, but with Canynges apparently growing increasingly frail, it was felt necessary to promote Young to that position in anticipation, perhaps, of his half-brother’s impending resignation from his aldermanry. The Company, led by staplers such as Young, appears to have been especially ready at this time to extend help to the Yorkist lords: at the end of the year more than £200 was raised from the membership for a loan to be given to York’s heir, the earl of March. Young was one of the contributors to the loan.39 Nightingale, 514-15; Grocers’ Co. wardens’ accts., 11571/1, f. 3. In the meantime he had been appointed to a civic committee which was to consider the best way for London to promote its interests in the Parliament summoned to meet on 7 Oct.40 Jnl. 6, f. 272. He tried once again to join the ranks of aldermen that autumn, and after failing to be elected for the ward of Billingsgate was finally successful when he was chosen to represent Farringdon Without on 2 Dec.

The accession of Edward IV provided opportunities for men who were prepared to lend liberally to the new rulers, but Young did not do so on a large scale, although in early October 1462 he provided £100, and may have lent similar sums on four occasions from the late 1460s.41 E403/827A, m. 2; 844, m. 3; E405/40, rot. 1; 48, rot. 1d; 53, rot. 1; 59, rot. 2. The rewards he reaped were consequently small: in June 1465 he had licence to export 375 sacks of wool free of customs through the ports of London, Sandwich and Southampton, bypassing Calais en route for the Mediterranean, probably by way of repayment of money he had lent.42 CCR, 1461-8, p. 274; C76/149, m. 22. His career of civic office holding continued with further service as one of the four auditors, two of whom were normally drawn from the court of aldermen, and in October 1466, finally, he reached the pinacle of the civic hierarchy through election as mayor. On a personal level, Young’s year in office was marred by the deaths not only of his wife but also of one of the sheriffs and the mayor’s sword-bearer, but he appears to have found favour with many sections of the citizenry, for it was noted that ‘menne callyd hym the good Mayre’. He seems to have been keen to maintain the dignity of the highest civic offices: on one occasion he was said to have secured the punishment of a recalcitrant alderman who refused to have a dead dog removed from outside his house.43 Hist. Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 233; R. Fabyan, New Chrons. ed. Ellis, 656.

Young’s position of relative security in the city hierrarchy as a respected former mayor was shaken when the disaffected earl of Warwick returned Henry VI to the throne in the autumn of 1470. This development split the court of aldermen and following the ‘illness’ of the mayor John Stokton in February 1471 the government of the city was led for a while by Richard Lee before he was ousted in favour of Thomas Cook II*, recently reinstated to his aldermanry by the Lancastrians. The return of Edward IV prompted Cook to take flight, but the city then had to withstand the forces of the Kentish rebels led by Fauconberg. Following the successful defence, the King entered the city on 21 May whereupon he knighted no fewer than 12 aldermen, including Young.44 Cal. Letter Bk. London, L, 98.

For the rest of his life, Young maintained good relations with the Crown, and reaped further rewards. In May 1472 he was permitted to ship 40 sacks of wool from London, Sandwich or Southampton free of customs in order to secure repayment of a debt of 160 marks owed to him by the keeper of the great wardrobe, probably for goods supplied by him.45 C76/156, m. 13. Two months later he received the grant of three messuages in London forfeited to the Crown in 1461 on the attainder of William Wandesford and subsequently granted to William, Lord Hastings. These holdings were subsequently excluded from the provisions of the Act of Resumption passed by Parliament in the spring of 1473.46 CPR, 1467-77, p. 341; PROME, xiv. 171. In recognition of his standing and experience as a merchant, in March 1472 he had been appointed a member of an embassy, headed by the marshall of Calais, Sir John Scott†, which was to meet with representatives of the duke of Burgundy at Bruges.47 C76/156, m. 23. Young continued to be prominent as one of London’s leading wool exporters, and on 18 Apr. 1476 he was chosen mayor of the Calais staple.48 E159/253, recorda Easter rot. 1. A notable feature of Young’s first months as mayor was the number of letters of protection issued or revoked to men who were involved in transactions with the staple, suggesting that he was making a considerable effort to try to re-supply the town and the garrison with goods of various kinds.49 Cal. P. and M. London, 1458-82, p. 107; CPR, 1467-77, p. 586; 1476-85, pp. 39, 58, 100; C241/258/76. Young reliquished his Calais office in the spring of 1478, and that November was appointed to the position of justice for the pleas of the Hanse merchants in the capital.50 Cal. Letter Bk. London, L, 161.

In his last years Young seems to have experienced some financial difficulties, at least partly caused by poor cash-flow. Among his principal debtors at the time of his death was a London draper, Richard Langton, to whom he had sold 85 butts of malmsey wine for £475. Several obligations were drawn up, with the final instalment due to be paid at Christmas 1483. It is possible that Young realized that he was unlikely to live that long and so took out an action for debt in respect of the money still owing, prompting Langton to petition Chancery in protest at the apparent breach of the agreement.51 C1/32/327. More serious may have been ‘a grete and grevours trouble ... betwene my lord Ferrers [Walter Devereux II*] and me’. The matter at issue is not recorded, but by November 1481, when he drew up his will, relations between the two men had improved to the extent that Young could say that ‘lorde Ferrers is nowe my veray gode lorde’, and appoint him as one of his executors. Nevertheless, the financial consequences of the dispute were such that Young was evidently unable to lay his hands upon the large sums of money that he would normally have expected to bequeath to his two sons and three daughters. In the event he settled on his sons, John, Thomas (a priest) and William (an apprentice grocer) only unspecified amounts that were to be found out of debts owed to him by Langton and by the King. This lack of cash extended also to the plate he had intended to leave to his daughters, one of whom was married to Sir John Parr†, while another was the wife of the lawyer Robert Molyneux. Young made it clear that in the course of his dispute with Lord Ferrers he had ‘spent largely of my goodes for my defense and peas to be had which hath caused me of the saide plate as of myn own goodes to helpe my self wherfore I can nott perfourme my furst wille and purpose made of the same plate’. In a cryptic reference to the tribulations of his own career he expressed the hope that his daughters would ‘consider my grete age with my greete expens and late gettings manny a day and my grete trouble a foreseide’. Young asked to be interred beside his first wife in the church of St. Michael Paternoster, and for a feast to be held during his month’s mind for the mayor, aldermen and commons of the city. Despite his financial problems, he was able to make one or two bequests of plate, including two standing cups which he left to the Grocers’ Company, and two cruets and a pax which he left to the church of St. Botolph Billingsgate. Yet the shortage of ready money at his diposal certainly constrained his bequests in other areas: his only long-term arrangement for his soul was a 20-year obit in St. Michael’s church. Some constraints evidently also applied to his lands. The holdings in Middlesex and Hertfordshire held jointly by him and his wife were to descend after her death to her heirs. The three messuages in London were also left to Joan, but were to descend to William, her youngest stepson, should there be no male issue of this second marriage. A similar provison applied to the Chesthunt and Waltham Cross properties, although this time the younger John was to benefit. The terms of the will suggest that Joan was a relatively young woman, but despite this, Young was to have no children with her. He died on 27 Nov. that year. The will was eventually proved in November 1482 when an inquisition post mortem was held in London. This listed only his tenements in St. Michael Paternoster, which he had granted to a group of feoffees, to the use of himself and Joan, shortly before his death.52 PCC 4 Logge (PROB11/7, ff. 29-31); C140/83/24; CFR, xxi. 235.

An indication of the extent of the debts owing to Young at the time of his death is provided by Joan’s later claim in the context of a long-running dispute with the male heirs of her second husband, the wealthy Sir Thomas Lewknor (d.1485) of Trotton in Sussex that she had brought goods, chattels and debts worth some 3,000 marks to her marriage to Lewknor. She further claimed that the Lewknors had taken possession of various obligations from Richard Langton, worth some £300, as well as other books and ledgers containing lists of Young’s debtors.53 C1/211/65. Shortly after her second husband’s death she managed to recover possession of Young’s holdings in London and Hertfordshire, but thereafter appears to have found it difficult to extract anything further from the Lewknors. In the meantime, however, her mother, ‘an old cankyrd heretyke that dotid ffor age namyd Johanne Bowgthon wedowe & modyr unto the wyffe of sir John yong’ had been burnt at the stake at Smithfield in London in April 1494. A London chronicle also indicated that Joan herself was under suspicion, since she had ‘a grete smell of an heretyk aftyr the modyr’.54 Gt. Chron . London, 252. The suggestion made in some sources that, having allegedly been converted to lollardy while married to Lewknor, she subsequently met the same fate as her mother, remains unproven. She was still alive in 1501 when she alienated some of Young’s lands in Chesthunt to Hugh Clopton†, perhaps to raise money, but nothing further is recorded of her.55 CCR, 1500-9, no. 134. For the question of Joan’s lollard views see Lollardy and the Gentry, 250-2, 258-60.