FORD, Simon atte

More can be added to the earlier biography,4 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 103. notably about atte Ford’s trading activities. In 1399 he was bound by statute staple at Chichester to pay the former collectors of customs in that port the sum of £133, and when he failed to do so rents due from his tenants in Marshwood Vale were confiscated to satisfy his creditors.5 C131/49/13.

The surviving bailiffs’ and cofferers’ accounts of Bridport rarely mention payments for parliamentary service, but in 1423-4 atte Ford was paid £2 ‘pro parliamento’, as well as a further sum of 26s. 8d. for unspecified services. His fellow Member in the Parliament of that year, Thomas Newton*, received no more than 20s.6 ‘Domesday Bk.’, f. 99. This may reflect on the value placed on their comparative experience of the Commons, for this was Newton’s first and only Parliament, but atte Ford was a veteran of at least eight. Atte Ford had obtained a pardon in January 1415 in respect of any fines or dues payable to the Crown, and he managed to get this pardon recorded in the Exchequer ten years later, in June 1425, when he was up at Westminster for his tenth Parliament, the Exchequer officials then being instructed not to trouble him further.7 E159/202, brevia Hil. rot. 23. Meanwhile, he had provided pledges for Henry Morgan and his wife Joan, who came from Dorset, when they presented a petition to the chancellor,8 C1/4/38. and in Michaelmas term 1419 he had been sued together with two fellow merchants of Bridport, Gilbert Draper† and William Pernham†, for a debt of 20 marks they allegedly owed William Thirlewall. Pernham later sat with him in the Commons, and they may have been on good terms. However, he fell out with two of his other parliamentary colleagues. During the Parliament of 1425 he brought an action in the court of common pleas against Edward Stikelane†, who had sat with him in 1417, alleging that Stikelane had broken his closes at Bradpole and taken timber worth £2. Then, in 1428, John Hore alias But*, who had twice been atte Ford’s fellow MP, accused him of unlawfully holding him prisoner.9 CP40/635, rot. 368; 657, rot. 314d; 670, rot. 270d. Perhaps atte Ford had done this while acting in an official capacity as bailiff. He is last recorded in the Easter term of 1436, when he appeared in the common pleas to sue a Bridport tanner for detention of a pyx and bag containing deeds.10 CP40/701, rot. 201.