DEBENHAM, William

More can be added to the earlier biography.5 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 762-3.

It is possible that the William Debenham who served as bailiff of Ipswich in 1414-15 and 1417-20 was the MP’s elder namesake and putative father.6 N.R. Amor, Late Med. Ipswich, suggests that the elder William, whom he assumes was indeed Debenham’s father, held the office in those years. The MP did not, as claimed in the earlier biography, hold the office in 1444-5, since William Walworth* and Peter Terry were the bailiffs of Ipswich that year.7 E368/217, rot. 8.

From the autumn of 1416 until mid 1425, Debenham was involved in a series of conveyances of lands at West Wretham, lying a few miles north-east of Thetford in Norfolk, but it is unclear whether these were lands he had acquired for himself or whether he was acting as a feoffee.8 King’s Coll., Cambridge, archs., WEW/7, 14, 15, 22, 51, 63.

Late in his career, Debenham fell out with William Walworth and his wife. In the summer of 1443, the couple sued him in the borough court over an annual rent of 3s. emanating from a tenement in the parish of St. Mary-le-Tower. Their suit had yet to reach the pleadings stage, let alone a conclusion, over a year later.9 Suff. RO (Ipswich), membrane, apparently detached from a petty ct. roll, 1443-4, C2/4/2/7; Bacon, 102.

Debenham was on far better terms with two other burgesses, John Caldwell* and William Weathereld*. During the 1420s, Caldwell stood surety when Debenham gained election to the first Parliament of 1421 and Debenham reciprocated by likewise standing surety when Caldwell became an MP in 1427.10 C219/12/5; 13/5. Both Caldwell and Weathereld remembered Debenham in their wills. In his of 1451, Weathereld asked the Carmelites at Ipswich, in whose church Debenham lay, to sing for the MP’s soul.11 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Kempe, ff. 303-4. Similarly, Caldwell provided for the establishment of a chantry in St. Laurence’s church, Ipswich, in his will of late 1460, directing that the priest serving it should sing for the souls of himself, of his wives and kin and of his late friend, William Debenham.12 Suff. RO, archdeaconry of Suff. wills, IC/AA1/1/7/4.