URBAN, David

More may be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 690.

Urban’s trade or profession is uncertain, although his employment in the later 1420s by a Breton merchant as his attorney in a lawsuit against another Cornishman may point to some legal training.3 C254/139/52. He may also have had interests in the tin industry, for he is on occasion encountered as a litigant in the stannary courts.4 SC2/157/5, rot. 3. Certainly, however, he was not above the violent squabbles characteristic of his fellow Cornishmen. In September 1407 he appeared before the Cornish bench and bound himself in £20 to keep the peace towards Roger Archer, a local man with whom he was evidently in dispute, and all others, but in the late summer of 1432 the Cornish j.p.s heard that Urban had clashed violently with one Walter Pennans and had struck him on the head with a ‘pykedstaff’. A jury found that Urban had acted in self-defence, but the Exchequer process to recover the £20 was already in motion, and even after Urban’s death his widow was being pursued for the money.5 E143/22/5; E159/206, recorda Mich. rots. 17d, 40d; 211, recorda Mich. rot. 2d; 214, recorda Trin. rot. 15. The dispute with the Archers had evidently continued, for in April 1430 a group of men from western Cornwall led by the Penryn gentleman John Archer were said to have broken into Urban’s close and houses at Penryn, an offence for which the latter claimed damages of £40.6 KB27/677, rot. 62.

Whether or not Urban should be identified with the David Renaudin who served as one of the executors of John Urban† of South Fleet, he certainly had close ties with both the Kentish line of the Urbans and the Renaudins, for one John Renaudin had stood surety for him at the time of his quarrel with Roger Archer in 1407, while in the spring of 1432 Dorothy, the widow and executrix of John Urban’s son Andrew was suing him for a debt of more than £45.7 E159/206, recorda Mich. rots. 17d, 40d; 211, recorda Mich. rot. 2d; CP40/685, rot. 127d.

Urban apparently maintained connexions with the greater gentry of his native shire. Although he does not appear to have been a regular member of the circles of either the great Arundells of Lanherne or the Bodrugans, he did on occasion act as a feoffee or attorney or attested property deeds for leading members of both families.8 Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR19/2; Edgcombe mss, ME46, 613.

As Urban died intestate, the administration of his goods was committed to his widow, Isabel, who was still engaged in settling her late husband’s affairs in 1442.9 CP40/709, rot. 134; 726, rot. 315; E159/214, recorda Trin. rot. 15.