| Constituency | Dates |
|---|---|
| Great Yarmouth | 1422 |
Attestor, parlty. elections, Great Yarmouth 1425, 1429, 1431, 1435.
Bailiff, Great Yarmouth Mich. 1413–14, 1416 – 17, 1422 – 23, 1426 – 27, 1429 – 30, 1432 – 34, 1437 – 38, 1442 – 43.
J.p. Great Yarmouth 17 Feb. 1415 – aft.July 1443, Norf. 8 Nov. 1423 – July 1424.
Commr. to keep the sea for the protection of fishermen, Norf., Suff. Oct. 1415.
Collector of customs and subsidies, Great Yarmouth 28 Feb. 1416–19.
More can be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 10.
In 1420 Robert Ellis of Great Yarmouth faced litigation in the Exchequer on the part of several plaintiffs, including Isabel, widow of Sir John Drayton† of Oxfordshire in one suit and Richard Buckland* in another. All of the suits in question were over debts allegedly contracted by Ellis in unknown circumstances. Yet it seems likely that Buckland’s suit arose from commercial dealings, given that he was predominantly a London fishmonger at this date and that both the MP and his father and namesake traded in fish. It is also possible that the defendant was in fact the elder Robert Ellis, the date of whose death is unknown.2 Ibid.; E13/135, rots. 11, 11d, 12d.
Whatever the case, the MP was certainly a defendant at Westminster shortly after beginning his sixth term as bailiff of Yarmouth. The suit, brought in the court of King’s bench by John Manning* and Thomas Hall I* in Michaelmas term 1432, related to his previous term as bailiff. Manning and Hall alleged that Ellis and his co-bailiff of 1429-30, Thomas Eyr, had not paid them the wages due to them as Yarmouth’s MPs in the Parliament of 1429.3 KB27/686, rot. 21. There is no reason to doubt the plaintiffs’ claim but it is likely that the borough’s financial problems, rather than maladministration on the part of Ellis and Eyr, were to blame.
It seems that Ellis fell out with Richard Ellis of Yarmouth, presumably a relative, in the mid 1430s. In Trinity term 1435 he was attached to answer in the Exchequer for committing ‘certain contempts against the King’s profit’ (presumably in his capacity as bailiff of Yarmouth), on the basis of an information which Richard, along with Robert Puttock and Henry Mundes of Lowestoft, had laid against him.
Two years later the same government department called upon him to render account in his capacity as a former customs collector, for merchandise that he and his erstwhile co-collector, John Boef, had arrested at Yarmouth.4 E159/211, recorda Trin. rot. 8d; 213, recorda Trin. rot. 23, 23d. It was possibly in connexion with this matter that he purchased the royal pardon issued to him on 26 June 1437.5 C67/38, m 19.