DUFFIELD, Richard

More can be added to the earlier biography.5 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 807-8, where, however, it is wrongly assumed that there were two Richard Duffields.

Beyond representing Grimsby in Parliament on 13 occasions, Duffield played little part in the town’s administrative affairs. In a career spanning over 40 years he seems to have served only once on the mayor’s council and never to have held one of the main town offices, although he polled 12 votes in the election of 21 Sept. 1434 for the office of bailiff.6 Grimsby ct. rolls 1/101, 13 Hen. VI. His legal and parliamentary service kept him often in London. From as early as 1405 he practiced as an attorney in the court of common pleas; and in the 1420s and early 1430s he frequently acted as attorney in the Exchequer for the sheriffs of Lincolnshire and Lincoln as well as the borough of Grimsby.7 CP40/576, att. rot. 3d; E159/200, adventus Mich. rot. 1; 203, adventus Mich. rot. 1; 208, recorda Mich. rot. 3; CP40/576, att. rot. 3d. He was also very active as a litigant on his own account. To cite one example among many, in Trinity term 1442 he sued Simon Elkyngton*, as former mayor, and the community of Grimsby for a debt of £40 (perhaps in connexion with non-payment of the annual fee of 13s. 4d. granted him by the corporation more than 20 years before), and the parson of Donnington near Benniworth for assaulting him at Caistor, about 14 miles from Grimsby.8 CP40/726, rots. 11d, 63d. When he was not in London, his administrative responsibilities in the county left him little time for Grimsby’s affairs: not only was he clerk of the peace in Lindsey for some 40 years, but he served at least two terms as the county’s under sheriff.

Duffield’s parliamentary service continued nearly to the end of his life. On 31 Jan. 1447 he was elected with his brother William, only for his election to be set aside in favour of a more important lawyer, Robert Staunton*, but on 16 Jan. 1449 he was successfully returned to the next Parliament. His election on this occasion was singular in that it was made by a jury of 12 rather than by the majority vote of a larger body of the town’s burgesses. The attraction to the town of himself and his fellow MP, William Grimsby*, as candidates was that they agreed to serve at a flat payment of 40s. each rather than a daily rate, such as the 12d. a day that our MP had been paid for his 123-day service in the Parliament of 1423.9 Bull. IHR, xlii. 214; Grimsby ct. rolls 1/101, 27 Hen. VI; chamberlains’ accts. 1/600/11. Duffield himself contributed 20d. to the expenses of the borough’s Members in the Parliament of November 1449. In Michaelmas term 1450 he appeared in the court of common pleas to sue two Grimsby burgesses, one of whom was John Sheriff*, each for debts of £10. He died very soon after: he is noted as deceased in an account of 1450-1 drawn up by the dean and chapter of Lincoln cathedral, who had employed him as their attorney in the common pleas for at least 30 years.10 N.L. Ramsay, ‘The English Legal Profession’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), p. lxxxiv. In a plea of Easter term 1452, his executors, John Tailboys*, Thomas Duffield and two others, sued Hugh Edon* for a debt of six marks.11 Grimsby bor. recs., assessments for parlty. expenses 1/612/1 (formerly 1/800/1); CP40/759, rot. 239; 765, rot. 221d. Thomas, who was one of the Lindsey coroners in 1450, may have been his son.12 CCR, 1447-54, p. 203.