JULKIN, John

More may be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 505-6.

The identity of Julkin’s wife has not been established with any degree of certainty, but she may have been related to the Creses of Shaugh, for in late 1435 her husband was accused of having forged a deed by which Ralph Hill, brother of the justice Sir Robert Hill†, had supposedly settled the remainder of lands in Portworthy (in Shaugh) on the Julkins, as well as a further deed by which the local yeoman John Crese and his wife Florence, the main beneficiaries of Hill’s grant, had demised the lands to them with immediate effect.3 CP40/699, rot. 566. It may have been in connexion with this transaction (said to have taken place in the final months of Henry V’s reign) that by 1422 Hill was suing Julkin for a debt of £10.4 CP40/647, rots. 13, 170; 648, rot. 60. Perhaps on account of this early connexion as late as 1452 Julkin was seeking the return of a chest of muniments from Thomas Hill IV* (whose place in the extensive Hill family has not been ascertained).5 CP40/766, rot. 51d. Another quarrel in the summer of 1440 pitted Julkin against his neighbour Richard Secheville* in a squabble over a tenement in Tavistock.6 CP40/718, rot. 116.

Others for their part sought, like Ralph Hill, to recover money from Julkin, among them Henry Denbold*, his colleague in the Parliament of 1435, the executors of John Brackley† (MP for Plympton in 1384), and later also those of Peter Rose* of Plympton Erle, trying to secure payment of a debt for which Rose himself had sued in vain in his lifetime.7 CP40/652, rots. 32, 90; 683, rot. 60; 697, rot. 47; 724, rot. 107; 758, rot. 283d.

Naturally, not all of Julkin’s dealings with his neighbours were acrimonious and (his four returns to Parliament for Tavistock aside) some of the respect that he enjoyed among them may be reflected in his occasional appearances as an arbiter of local disputes and a witness to the property transactions of the men of western Devon.8 Plymouth and W. Devon RO, Bewes, Dickinson and Scott mss, 1278/4; Cornw. RO, Coode and French mss, CF2/215/52.

The execution of Julkin’s will was entrusted to his wife, who herself died before early 1460, when John Wydeslade*, chief prothonotary of the court of common pleas, sued her executors (her son-in-law John Honychurch* and her former husband’s kinsman, Richard Julkin) for a debt of £4.9 CP40/796, rot. 354d; 799, rot. 511.