DAMMER, Richard

More can be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 745-6.

Dammer served the bishop of Chichester as bailiff of his liberty for some 24 years, in the course of which he attended all three of his Parliaments. When, on 29 June 1446, as ‘of New Shoreham, gentleman’, he obtained a royal pardon, this made reference not only to this office but also to his former position as a coroner in Sussex, which he had filled throughout the 1430s.3 C67/39, m. 38.

The MP was apparently admitted to the freedom of one of the Cinque Ports in Sussex, for in the late 1440s he successfully claimed a Portsman’s exemption from parliamentary taxation on his moveable goods at Shoreham and various places in the rape of Arundel.4 E179/229/151. Over the years he had brought a number of suits for debt in the court of common pleas against men from his home county, routinely appearing in person to do so. On occasion the sums of money involved were quite substantial, amounting to £30.5 CP40/699, rot. 589d. Among those he sued were Richard Roger* and William Snelling*, both neighbours of his at Shoreham. He alleged that the latter had unjustly taken some of his crops in the late 1420s.6 CP40/647, rot. 102d; 651, rot. 220d; 658, rot. 446d; 680, rot. 258; 691, rot. 575; 724, rot. 62; 753, rot. 374d; 756, rot. 349. A plea he brought in 1450, in his capacity as receiver for Reynold West, Lord de la Warre, indicates that his association with this member of the nobility had lasted for at least 16 years.7 CP40/757, rot. 201d. He was still an active litigant on his own account in 1461, by which date he must have been long in years.8 CP40/800, rot. 34; 802, rot. 264d.