FITLING, John

More can be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 76.

Borough records show that Fitling was admitted to the freedom of Hull in 1392.2 Hull Hist. Centre, Kingston-upon-Hull recs., bench bk. 2, BRE 1, p. 240. His trading activities extended to Normandy, and in October 1420 he was one of those who arbitrated at Rouen in a dispute between the York merchant, William Ackborow, and Richard Rolleston of Beverley.3 J. Kermode, ‘Merchants of York, Hull and Beverley’ (Sheffield Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1990), app. 4.

In November 1421 Fitling and his wife, Joan, the widow of the Calais esquire, Richard Wandesford, appeared before the mayor and aldermen of York to register a conveyance of property in Fossegate, as well as land in nearby Sutton and Newton, to John Haliday of Heslington.4 York Memoranda Bk. iii. (Surtees Soc. clxxxvi), 50-51. In 1429 the mayor and bailiffs of Hull assigned to Fitling and Thomas Marshall† the goods and chattels of a fellow burgess, Thomas Bilton, in order that they might clear the latter’s debts.5 BRE 1, p. 263.

The eight houses that Fitling possessed at Hull when he died comprised one of the more substantial estates in the town.6 VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), i. 84.