BURTON, John I

More information can be added to the earlier biography.4 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 437-9.

During his career, Burton purchased at least three royal pardons, issued in January 1416, 1437 and 1452.5 C67/37, m. 17; 40, m. 33; E159/213, brevia Easter rot. 30.

Within a year of the dissolution of the Parliament of 1417, Burton and the other MP for Bristol in that assembly, Thomas Norton†, pursued separate suits in the Exchequer against John Leycestre†, the sheriff of Bristol in 1417-18, for non-payment of their parliamentary wages. According to the bill that Burton brought there on 22 Oct. 1418, he and Norton had acquired a writ of expenses after the dissolution of the Parliament on the previous 17 Dec., which Norton had delivered to the sheriff ten days later. Yet Leycestre had refused to pay them their wages, in spite of having levied the sum of £20 10s. due to them for 41 days’ service as MPs, at the generous daily rate of 5s. each that the town still allowed to its representatives at this date. Leycestre responded to Burton’s suit, and to a like suit brought by Norton, by claiming that he had never in fact received the writ.6 E13/134, rot. 2.

Through his commercial activities, Burton had dealings with Paolo Meliani, a merchant from Lucca resident in London, although the two men had fallen out with each other by 1427. In late February that year they appeared in the Exchequer where they agreed to submit their differences to a panel of arbitrators including Lewis John*, Robert Whittingham I* and John Fortescue*. For whatever reason, these referees failed to make their award in the allotted time, leaving both parties in jeopardy from the bonds of arbitration (for 300 marks) that they had exchanged with each other. Burton and Meliani therefore returned to the Exchequer to have the bonds cancelled on the following 23 May. Their co-operation in this respect might suggest that their differences were far from irreconcilable, even if the outcome of the dispute is unknown.7 E159/203, recogniciones Hil. 5 Hen. VI.

Through a different quarrel of the same period, Burton was the plaintiff in the court of common pleas. In Trinity term 1427, he pleaded that Bartholomew Putte, a yeoman from London, had wrongly sued him at an admiralty court held at Southwark in late 1422. Putte’s suit had related to Burton’s seizure of three ships, but the latter, citing a statute of Richard II’s reign that limited the jurisdiction of the admiral of England to trespasses committed on the high seas, asserted that the supposed trespass had occurred at Bristol. Burton further complained that he had been obliged twice to appear before John Tilney†, deputy of the then admiral, Thomas, duke of Exeter, at Southwark in November 1422, to his damage of £3,000. The plea roll does not however reveal in what capacity, or for what reason, the MP had seized the vessels in question. Both parties agreed to submit the matter to a jury, but the proposed trial appears never to have taken place.8 CP40/666, rot. 318; 669, rot. 1; 670, rots. 40d, 300.

Another suit in the same court in which Burton was a party, this time as the defendant, came to pleadings in Michaelmas term 1428. The plaintiff, Richard Forster II*, likewise a Bristol merchant, sued Burton for a debt arising from a bond made between them at London in August 1424. By means of this security, Burton had undertaken to pay Forster £244 (presumably in connexion with some business dealing) at Michaelmas 1425. While acknowledging that Burton had paid £184 of this sum, Forster asserted that £40 remained outstanding. Burton responded by seeking and obtaining licence to negotiate with his opponent out of court until Hilary term 1429. In the following term, he put in a plea that Forster had formally acquitted him of the £40, but the latter claimed that this release related to the payment of £184. Although the parties agreed to a trial, Burton subsequently obtained further licence to treat with Forster out of court, and it is likely that they resolved the dispute informally.9 CP40/671, rot. 320d; 673, rot. 110d.

The records of yet another dispute show that, like other Bristol merchants, Burton traded with Ireland. In the later 1430s or early 1440s, Richard Clevedon (probably the minor royal servant of that name) sued him in the Chancery over a cargo of seven pipes of salmon bought from Ó Domhnaill of Lassery (Asseroe in county Donegal). Clevedon claimed that his servant, Harry Melon, had purchased the fish for him and then entrusted it to Thomas Brounfeld to deliver to Bristol, but when Brounfeld had landed the cargo at Bristol Burton had taken it for his own use. While also acknowledging that he and Burton had submitted their dispute to arbitration, Clevedon now sought to win his case in the Chancery, which he asked to subpoena Brounfeld for examination. In his answer to Clevedon’s bill, Brounfeld stated that, in fact, he had made the purchase (albeit with the assistance of Melon), and that he had done so on Burton’s behalf. Burton was also obliged to respond to Clevedon’s bill. He declared that the matter was determinable at common law and that Brounfeld had truthfully answered the bill. He also sought costs and damages from his opponent for a wrongful suit.10 C1/43/249-51.

It is possible that Burton’s ship, La Kateryne, was not the only one of his vessels to become a subject of discussion in the Parliament of 1442. As recorded in the parliament roll, when that assembly extended the subsidy on wool exports an exoneration of duty was allowed to those merchants who had lost goods on a couple of English ships taken by the King’s enemies, or on a ship that John Burton had lost at sea.11 PROME, xi. 319, 329-30. The roll does not identify this John Burton as ‘of Bristol’ although it is conceivable that he was the subject of this biography given that the MP was a shipowner.