NOTTINGHAM, William I

More may be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 857.

On at least two occasions Nottingham arbitrated in quarrels between his fellow townsmen. In December 1423 he was among those appointed to settle differences between John Trewe* and John Gosse, and in January 1425 he and others made an award intended to resolve a boundary dispute between Robert Selby* and John Segrave.2 Essex RO, Colchester bor. recs., ct. rolls 1423-5, D/B 5 Cr44, m. 9d; 45, mm. 22d-23. During the last dozen or so years of his life, Nottingham himself was embroiled in a quarrel of far greater seriousness and duration. A feoffee and executor of Ellen Brokholes, he supported her son-in-law, John Sumpter* of Colchester, in his bitter property dispute with Robert Arneburgh, who had married another of Ellen’s two daughters by the Essex knight Sir Geoffrey Brokholes. Much was at stake because Ellen’s daughters and their issue were the heirs to the estates that she and Sir Geoffrey had held in Essex, Hertfordshire and Warwickshire. In a partisan account of the quarrel drawn up some years after his death, it was alleged that Nottingham and two other burgesses from Colchester, Simon Mate* and Thomas Godstone*, had used the borough’s seal to validate a document supporting Sumpter. The account adds that the three men suffered divine retribution for ‘theyre vntrue labour’ on Sumpter’s behalf, since ‘not withstandyng that they were lykly men and lusty to have lyven mony a yere... Godde schorted her lyfe dayes’.3 C. Carpenter, Armburgh Pprs. 9, 62-63, 194.

In October 1432, shortly before making his will, Nottingham stood as a surety for Thomas Godstone’s brother John*, the occasion being John’s admission to the freedom of Colchester.4 Colchester ct. roll 1432-3, D/B 5 Cr51, m. 3.