PERLE, John

More may be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 55-56.

While Perle was serving his first term as bailiff and during the prorogation of his first Parliament, he and his parents became involved in an important dispute with his mother’s family, the Gamels. The quarrel arose from contradictory interpretations of the will of Thomas Gamel†, made as long before as 1355, with our MP’s mother believing herself entitled to property in Shrewsbury in the hands of her brother, John Gamel the elder. The Perles accordingly entered that property, and on 8 July 1406 Gamel and his son, John Gamel* the younger, sued a special assize of novel disseisin against them. This was the prelude to the referral of the matter to a group of eight arbiters with John Burley† as umpire: the Perles nominated the Shropshire lawyer, Thomas Lee†, and three of the leading Shrewsbury burgesses, Thomas Skinner†, Roger Thornes†, and Robert Thornes†, our MP’s fellow Member in the 1406 Parliament; and the Gamels relied upon a group of higher standing, Sir Thomas Aston†, one of those commissioned to hear the assize, John Knightley†, deputy justiciar of Chester and North Wales, John Whethales, a Staffordshire j.p., and a burgess, Richard Stury. Their award, made on 23 Aug. at Shrewsbury, favoured the male Gamels, although a disagreement over its precise terms brought the dispute into the court of common pleas. The matter was, however, quickly concluded: a jury was called into that court for Hilary term 1408 but instead a concord was made locally with the borough authorities providing wine for the occasion.4 CP40/587, rot. 135; Shrewsbury recs., bailiffs’ accts. 3365/355. For the will of Thomas Gamel: Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. 3rd ser. v. 393-8.

According to a petition presented to the Lords by the abbot of Shrewsbury in the Parliament of October 1423, Perle, as bailiff, had been among a group of prominent burgesses who had violently disrupted the abbey’s fair in the previous August, threatening the monks and guarding the town gates to prevent them collecting the tolls and profits of the fair. Perle himself was then representing his borough in the Commons, and it may be that he had secured election in the hope of impeding the abbot’s complaint to Parliament. If so, he failed and, with his fellow Shrewsbury MP, Urian St. Pierre*, was required by the chancellor to find surety in the massive sum of 1,000 marks that the borough community would keep the peace to the abbey. The matter was then resolved through an arbitration sponsored by the royal council.5 SC8/71/3550.

There is little else to add to the earlier biography. On 25 Feb. 1409 Perle sat as a justice, in company with Robert Tirwhit, to hear the assize of novel disseisin pending between two of the town’s leading burgesses, Nicholas Gerard†and Urian St. Pierre. He was commissioned as a nominee of Gerard as plaintiff, for, in June 1410, he offered surety that Gerard would adhere to the compromise made in the dispute.6 KB27/595, rot. 80 (4); Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. liv. 102-4. His father was one of the jurors: KB27/595, rot. 80 (1). At the curia magna held on 20 Oct. 1418, just after he had ended a double term as bailiff and while coroner, he was fined 4s. 10d. for assaulting a corveser (an assault concealed by the suitors of Dog Lane who were also fined). A year later, on 30 Nov. 1419, he and his first wife, Margaret, joined their daughter, Agnes, and her husband, Richard Horde*, in alienating a garden in ‘Shotplace’, reserving a rent of 4s. p.a.7 Shrewsbury recs., ct. rolls 3365/828; Salop Archs., Mostyn Owen mss, 3890/2/1/1.