SELBY, Robert

A native of Gloucester, Selby gained admission to the freedom of Colchester in 1412-13. Colchester bor. recs., ‘Oath bk.’, D/B 5 R1, f. 74d. By trade, he was a dyer but his business interests were not restricted to that occupation since he was also a merchant and shipowner dealing in commodities like iron and salt. Colchester ct. rolls, 1419-20, 1435-6, 1439-40, D/B 5 Cr42, m. 23d; 53, m. 10; 57, m. 8d. VCH Essex, ix. 35, wrongly distinguishes Selby as being the only bailiff of Colchester before the mid 15th century who was not a merchant. He was the owner of at least two vessels, a ship called the Ellen of Colchester and a barge named Le Trinite, and in the late 1440s he obtained licence from the Crown to carry pilgrims on the Ellen to the Spanish shrine of Santiago de Compostella. DKR, xlviii. 296; C67/38, m. 1. Selby’s properties in Colchester and its liberty included holdings in North Street, East Stockwell Street and Mile End. Mercers’ Co., London, St. Paul’s school, cart., ff. 223, 224, 225v-226; Colchester ct. roll D/B 5 Cr60, m. 22. He supplemented them in late 1439 when he, Robert Priour* and two other burgesses acquired the farm of six acres in the borough from the Crown. CFR, xvii. 124.

In the mid 1420s Selby was involved in a boundary dispute with John Segrave, one of his neighbours in North Street. The quarrel was referred to arbitrators, who presented their award to the borough court in early 1425. They ruled that two houses belonging to Selby, one of them newly built, should be allowed to stand, and ordered Segrave to fill in all windows and doors on a building facing on to Selby’s tenement and garden, save for two windows they instructed him to glaze. The award did not go all Selby’s way, since the arbitrators also ruled that Segrave might retain a road he had built between the two men’s properties and a watercourse (part of which ran through his opponent’s close). Colchester ct. roll D/B 5 Cr45, mm. 22d-23.

Selby quarrelled with other burgesses besides Segrave, usually over debts they owed him, although in 1436 he used the borough court to sue a clerk, John Gurdon, for withholding a ‘Gunne’ from him. Ibid. rolls D/B 5 Cr43, m. 4; 45, mm. 9, 19d; 47, m. 9d; 53, m. 10; 54, m. 5d; 57, m. 12. Among those of his fellow townspeople with whom he was on friendly terms were Thomas Godstone* and his wife Christine. Christine, who died in 1425, bequeathed a tenement to Selby and his own wife to hold for the rest of their lives, Ibid. D/B 5 Cr45, m. 39. and after Godstone’s death in 1432 Selby took part in conveyances made in accordance with his will. St. Paul’s school, cart., ff. 207v, 210, 211. In the same period, however, he fell out with Godstone’s brother, John Godstone*, who sued him in Chancery for breach of trust as a feoffee of the dead man. C1/75/38.

Selby had begun to play a role in Colchester’s public affairs by September 1418, when he was one of those who elected the borough’s officers for the coming year. During his own career as an office-holder he served in all the major positions in the local hierarchy, including that of j.p. (an office granted to Colchester by royal charter in 1447), and represented the borough in at least two Parliaments. Early in his first term as bailiff, he and his fellow, John Beche*, oversaw the burning of a lollard at the Balkerne Gate. Red Ppr. Bk. Colchester ed. Benham, 52-53. During his last, the borough took legal action at Westminster to overturn a recent royal grant of the borough’s fishery to John de Vere, earl of Oxford. P. Morant, Essex (Colchester), i. 86-87. Selby was also a member of the local guild of St. Helen and he was one of its wardens in the early 1440s. In October 1444 the borough court fined him and his fellow warden, Henry Stampe, for failing to maintain a bridge next to the guild’s granary at North Hill. Colchester ct. roll D/B 5 Cr60, m. 2.

The most dramatic episode in Selby’s career occurred late in life. On 1 July 1450, during Cade’s revolt, one of Jack Cade’s lieutenants, John Gigges, came to Colchester, to raise rebellion there and in pursuit of the King’s constable of the local castle, John Hampton II*, an esquire of the Household. Failing to find the constable, he apprehended Hampton’s servant and deputy constable, Thomas Mayne*, whom he brought to Cade in Southwark. The unfortunate Mayne made a brief will at Southwark on 4 July, where the rebels beheaded him a day later. Of no particular interest for its contents, the will is of most significance for its list of witnesses. At the head of the list were Selby and a fellow burgess, William Lecche*, showing that Gigges had brought them to London with the deputy constable. Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 193; I.M.W. Harvey, Jack Cade, 94; PCC 12 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 91). Although Lecche and Selby did not suffer Mayne’s fate, it is very unlikely that they had come to London willingly: the fact that they witnessed his will suggests that they had shared his confinement with him. Later, in February 1453, an indictment taken at Colchester would charge Lecche with complicity in the revolt, an accusation very probably without foundation. KB9/26/1/17; KB27/778, rex rot. 8.

By then, however, Selby was no longer alive. The date of his death is unknown but he was certainly dead by the spring of 1452 when his executors, John Page and John Thomas, defended an action in Chancery, over some bonds he had allegedly entered into with a fellow burgess, Thomas Andrewe. C1/18/1-2; 22/127. It was in their capacities as Selby’s executors that Page and Thomas took action in the court of King’s bench against John Isebrond, a chaplain from Ipswich, and John Chircheman, a merchant from Colchester, later in the same year, accusing them of having illegally maintained a lawsuit. KB27/766, rot. 8d. Selby’s will was enrolled in the borough court in 1454-5, but the court roll in question has not survived. Colchester ‘Oath bk.’, f. 96. There is no evidence that he had any children, although there was a Richard Selby, who stood surety for Nicholas Peek* at the Colchester election to the Parliament of 1447, C219/15/4. and another Robert Selby, who was active in the borough in Henry VII’s reign. Stowe 828, ff. 15v, 84v.