FISHER, Ralph

A series of conveyances of a close in Barkeby Lane in the east suburb of Leicester give an indication of Furnes’s parentage. In 1418 this property was granted to John Furnes, a draper of the town, and Isabel, his wife, by a Leicester fuller named William Athelard. Ten years later, John surrendered his interest, and in 1431 the close was settled on William Clerk* and Maud, his wife, and Clerk’s issue. However, in March 1444, after Maud’s death, Clerk granted it to our MP in fee. Our MP’s tenure was even briefer for, in the following January, he conveyed the close to another draper, Richard Barlowe. The most likely explanation of these conveyances is that Ralph was John’s son, a supposition supported by their common trade as drapers. With less conviction, it might be concluded that Maud was our MP’s sister, and Barlowe his stepfather. Even more speculatively, it may be that our MP was a direct descendant of the Ralph Fisher, who served as mayor in 1397-8.1 Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, 334, 340, 343-4; Leicester Bor. Recs. ed. Bateson, ii. 448. He is described as a draper in a deed of 1453: CCR, 1454-61, p. 81.

Fisher, was already established in the town in his own right in the late 1430s: in September 1438 he was one of those enfeoffed by Thomas Clerk (who may have been the father of his sister’s husband) of messuages in the Saturday Market and elsewhere.2 Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. 342. But it was not until nearly ten years later that he took a role in the town’s public affairs. His election as mayor in September 1447 was followed by election on 12 Nov. 1450 to represent the town in Parliament and service as one of the four stewards of the fair in 1452-3. As one of the 24 jurats, the unelected town council from whom the mayor was chosen, he witnessed a deed at the portmanmoot of 16 Dec. 1454. In the following June he attested his first and only recorded parliamentary election.3 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 425, 448, 453; C219/16/1, 3. His main property in the town appears to have lain in the Swine Market, now the High Street. In the rental of the chantry of Corpus Christi, compiled in 1459, he is noted as owing a rent of 9s. 6d. for the tenement there in which he lived, and a further 6d. for another tenement in the neighbouring Sheep Market, now Silver Street.4 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 268.

Little else is known about Fisher, but the offices he held are not the only indication of his prominence in the town. He numbered the more important townsmen among his close acquaintance. In about 1439 he was named as one of the executors of the wealthy Leicester merchant, Ralph Brasier alias Humberston*. Later, in 1445, with Adam Racy* and William Grantham*, he was one of those to whom a glover of Coventry, Richard Knytteford, conveyed property in the parish of St. Leonard on the northern edge of the town; and Grantham, at an unknown date in the 1450s, followed Brasier in naming him as one of his executors.5 Ibid. 422; CP40/714, rot. 92d; 790, rot. 365.

Fisher’s activity markedly diminished in the later years of his career. He was still one of the jurats in 1462, when he witnessed a lease from the community to the town clerk, but he did not hold borough office after 1453. On 20 June 1464 he made a grant as one of the feoffees of Richard Lokear, and this is the last reference to him in an active role. He was dead by Trinity term 1468 when his daughter, Margaret, was involved in litigation as his executrix. She appears to have succeeded him in his lands: in October 1484 she granted two cottages in Gallowtree to John Reynold of Belgrave.6 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 278, 428-9, 436-7: CP40/828, rot. 327.