RICHARDSON, John

This MP was possibly the son of another John Richardson, who in 1425 owed rent from property in Old Moor (in Bothal), about 15 miles north of Newcastle, to William, Lord Fitzhugh. Little is known of this John, but he was almost certainly a Newcastle merchant. He may have been the John Richardson (also known as William) who was captured at sea aboard Le Kateryn of Newcastle by the Scots: in February 1432 Bishop Langley of Durham granted an indulgence to his widowed mother, Joan Hedlam of Gateshead, to facilitate the payment of his ransom. CPR, 1422-9, p. 168; Reg. Langley, iii. (Surtees Soc. clxix), 962. This John appears to have played little if any role in the government of Newcastle, but he survived into the 1450s. There is thus a danger of conflating the two men. In the early part of his career the MP is sometimes distinguished in the records by the addition of ‘junior’, such as when listed as an attestor to the Newcastle parliamentary election of the autumn of 1450 or when assessed on an annual income of £5 to the subsidy of 1450-1; but, given that the younger man is known to have been active as early as 1446, when shipping wool from Newcastle, the probability is that it was the younger man and he alone who was so active in the town’s affairs between 1449 and the early 1460s. C219/16/1; E179/158/54, rot. 3; Welford, i. 322-3; E159/227, brevia Hil. rot. 29. This assumption has been followed here.

Richardson’s appearance at the election to the 1450 Parliament may have been prompted by a personal interest that he shared with other leading townsmen. On 20 Nov., two weeks after this Parliament assembled at Westminster, he joined one of Newcastle’s MPs, John Ward II*, in the Exchequer, seeking compensation in respect of customs paid by them and other Newcastle merchants on wool exported in two ships lost at sea in March 1446, when Le Petre, bound for Bruges, foundered in storms, and April 1449, when Le Mariknight, bound for Middelburg in Zeeland, was captured by pirates. They secured licence to export wool free of customs to the value of their loss. C219/16/1; Welford, i. 322-3; E159/227, brevia Hil. rot. 29.

Richardson’s administrative career intensified from the mid-1450s. In September 1454, five years after serving as sheriff, he was elected as mayor of Newcastle and went on to serve four successive terms. Indeed, he dominated the government of the town throughout the remainder of the decade and into the early 1460s, and it is not therefore surprising to find that he was elected as an MP. On 7 Nov. 1459 he was returned to Parliament alongside John Penrith*. C219/16/5. Nothing is known of their activities at this Lancastrian assembly at Coventry, which saw the attainder of the duke of York and other Yorkist lords, but, unlike Penrith, he does not appear to have been associated with the Lancastrian regime. Both men, however, had a more private matter pending against them during the Parliament. They, together with another Newcastle merchant, Alan Bird*, had been sued in the Exchequer by a local man, John Broun, who complained that they had violently prevented him exercising his office, held by royal grant, of keeper of the fishery called ‘le pryk fysshe’ in the river Tyne. This was clearly a more important matter than it appears, for Richardson and his fellow accused personally appeared in the Exchequer in every term from Hilary 1460 until the end of the reign when it remained unresolved. E159/235, recorda Easter rot. 34.

As well as his municipal office, from the spring of 1455, Richardson was one of the collectors of customs in the port of Newcastle. Noted as a capable and diligent customs official, he was frequently rewarded at the Exchequer for his efforts and appears to have made a number of small loans to the Crown. E403/802, m. 4; 810, mm. 4, 5; 814, m. 4; 815, m. 1; 817, mm. 4, 7; 820, m. 2; 829, m. 4. These rewards no doubt added to the attractions of an office that our MP was able to hold on to for seven years. A curious case in Chancery dating from after his death implies that his success in keeping the office required investment. His factor reported to the chancellor a conversation he had had in London on 7 May 1457 with Thomas Hedlam, who had once been our MP’s fellow collector in the port. Hedlam told him that his master would lose the customership ‘withoute he might make shyfte’ of £40, which Hedlam and the factor then raised, in part by forging an obligation in Richardson’s name. This is difficult to interpret but it leaves little doubt that the office was worth keeping. C1/32/446; E403/810, m. 5. It may be relevant here that Richardson was reappointed as collector four days after Hedlam’s warning: CFR, xix. 169, 170, 172.

Little evidence survives of Richardson’s personal affairs. When he sued out a general pardon in December 1455 he described himself as a ‘mercer’. In 1454-5, although technically barred as customer from trading, he exported a variety of commodities, including iron, grindstones and wool; and in 1456-7 he is recorded as exporting wool, lead, onions and fish. C67/41, m. 11; Newcastle-upon-Tyne Customs Accts. 1454-1500 (Surtees Soc. ccii), 18-20, 22, 28-30, 32-33, 36, 45. He was dead by Easter term 1465, when his widow and executrix, Marion, was sued for debt by the London draper, John Worsop*, from whom part of the £40 supposedly needed to keep our MP in the customer-ship had been raised. She may not have outlived him for long, for in Hilary term 1466 it was Richardson’s administrator, John Colt, who appeared in the Exchequer by attorney to recover £40 owed in repayment of a loan made while our MP had been one of the collectors of customs. CP40/815, rot. 439; E13/151, rot. 82.