ACCLOM, John

This MP poses problems of identification not addressed in the earlier biography. In one place in that biography he is conflated with his namesake of Stillingfleet near York, who, in a petition to the chancellor in 1433, complained of the wrongful seizure of goods worth £240 from his father, Henry, as long before as 1405.3 C1/12/222. In his will of July 1433 Henry Acclom named his son John as one of the executors of his will: Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 3, f. 358. The MP is also to be distinguished from his namesake of Kingston-upon-Hull and Cathwaite, in Sutton-upon-Derwent (East Riding). The latter sued out letters of protection in March 1447 as serving under William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, in the garrison at Roxburgh; served as a customs collector in Kingston-upon-Hull in the 1450s; was among the Neville supporters who, in July 1453, were ordered to cease rioting; and received a comprehensive pardon in March 1460.4 CPR, 1446-52, p. 56; 1452-61, p. 545; CFR, xix. 57, 106; PPC, vi. 149-50. A pardon of 1455 shows that the John ‘of Kingston-upon-Hull’ was also ‘of Cathwaite’: C67/41, m. 2. This John is the most likely candidate as attestor of the Yorks. parlty. elections of 1442, 1447 and 1450: C219/15/2, 4, 16/1. The MP’s career is less interesting, but is better documented than the earlier biography allows.

Acclom’s early obscurity is to be explained by the survival of his elder brother Robert. Robert was still living in 1418, when he paid tithes on his catch of fish to the town’s church of St. Mary, but was certainly dead by 1423 when John occurs in the borough records as his administrator.5 E101/514/31, ff. 6v, 7v; Scarborough ct. bk. 2, f. 177. He then came into the inheritance of his mother and that part of his paternal estate unburdened by the survival of his stepmother, Alice. He soon found himself in dispute with her. By the mid 1420s she had taken, as her third husband, a local gentleman, Henry Nesfield of Appleton-le-Street (North Riding). In Easter term 1428 the couple sued our MP for a third of ten messuages and 20 acres of meadow in Scarborough as Alice’s dower. He replied that his father had not been seised of this property and no verdict is recorded.6 CP40/669, rot. 97. Litigation was continuing as late as 1450: CP40/758, rot. 225d.

Like several of Scarborough’s leading burgesses, Acclom held land in the surrounding countryside. When, in 1417, he paid tithes of 6s. 8d. to the church of St. Mary, he was described as ‘of Ganton’, some seven miles south of the town, and he is given the same attribution in later records, as, for example, when he sat as a juror in an inquisition ad quod damnum at Scarborough in September 1420. He also had property slightly further afield, at Levisham, about 12 miles west of Scarborough, for, in 1421, Sir Richard Percehay, lord of the manor of Levisham, sued a writ of cessavit per biennium against him in respect of a messuage and bovate there.7 E101/514/31, f. 26; C143/447/19; CP40/640, rot. 20. Other actions are indicative of landed interests at Falsgrave, just outside his native town. While an MP in the Parliament of 1426 he was a defendant, in company with Robert Wardale*, also then sitting for Scarborough, in an action of trespass sued by Sir John Salvin and two other local gentry for taking goods and depasturing grass there together worth as much as £40; and in 1435 he himself, in company with another of the town’s MPs, William Forster I*, and the lawyer, Guy Roucliffe, secured writs of outlawry against three local men for close-breaking there.8 CP40/662, rot. 20; 698, rot. 148.

Several Chancery petitions provide details of Acclom’s other personal affairs. In February 1440 he alleged that another leading townsman, John Daniell*, had purchased two acres of land in the fields of Scarborough which should have come to him under an entail, and then persuaded a priest, who had a life estate in one of the acres, to burn the deed of entail. Another petition shows the matter in a much more complex light. A London fishmonger, John Fulston, complained that Acclom had impeded him in the administration of the goods of his fellow fishmonger, William Rightwise, who had earlier owned the disputed acres. He complained that while, in November 1439, he was awaiting official appointment as administrator, Acclom had visited him in London, bringing a key to a chest containing some of the goods of the deceased, who had died in Scarborough. The two men had then examined the contents and Acclom had removed, on the faithful promise of returning them, a deed concerning two houses in ‘Haydon’ (Yorkshire), held by Rightwise in mortgage, 4s. 4d. in money and a ‘dye of silver’. According to Fulston’s petition our MP then broke his promise.9 C1/9/245; 10/6. Rightwise is wrongly called ‘Righthouse’ in the earlier biography. How these two petitions were related does not appear, but it is unlikely that Acclom was an innocent party.

Another Chancery petition accused Acclom of exploiting his power as bailiff for the purposes of extortion. Thomas Spur of Ely claimed that, having delivered 100 marks to his apprentice to go to Scarborough to purchase certain merchandise, the unfortunate apprentice, on arrival there, was wrongly imprisoned by Acclom on the spurious grounds that an apprentice with so large a sum had to be a thief. Our MP then took the money for himself, and when Spur sought remedy from the King brought a fraudulent action alleging trespass at Scarborough, even though Spur had never even been to Yorkshire, and so secured his outlawry. This episode is probably to be dated to our MP’s first term as bailiff in 1422-3 and relates to a very long standing quarrel between Spur and the Accloms, for, as long before as 1391, Spur had been pardoned of an outlawry incurred for not answering our MP’s father on a trespass plea (thus throwing doubt on Spur’s later claim that he had never visited Yorkshire).10 C1/68/221; CPR, 1388-92, p. 425. Acclom was also accused of abuse of office during one of his later terms as bailiff. On 2 May 1436 he and John Collom* were obliged to appear in Chancery to deny that they had made fraudulent entries on a plea of covenant, pending before them as bailiffs, to the disadvantage of a Dutch merchant, Peter Mayun. The latter appears to have enjoyed the protection of William Venour, warden of the Fleet, and 12 days later the two bailiffs were bound in £200 to Venour to abide arbitration, with what result is unknown.11 C1/1/57-58; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 61-62.

Acclom’s commercial interests have left few impressions on the records. He did not pursue the fishing interests of his brother, Robert – or, at least, his name does not appear among those paying tithes on fish in the surviving tithe accounts for the church of St. Mary between 1434 and 1442. He did, however, export grain, suing, on 21 Jan. 1441, a royal licence to do so in company with another townsman, William Rasyn.12 DKR, xlviii. 343.

Acclom died without issue, instructing his executors – his wife Alice, William Paulyn* and John Mery, ‘serjeant’ of Scarborough – to sell his lands for the payment of his debts and the endowment of prayers.13 York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 367.