SELMAN, William

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 336.

In 1430 Selman stood surety for the Plympton MP John Serle alias Silverlock*, who had acted for him in the same capacity in 1425. C219/13/3; 14/2. Yet his relations with the men of Plympton were not always so cordial: in early 1456 he accused a local butcher, John Lorymer, and the town clerk, John Heryng, of breaking into his close and depasturing his grass. CP40/780, rot. 347. Similarly, in 1458 Selman was in dispute with an Exeter ‘purser’ over the right to a house in Plymouth, CP40/789, rot. 319d. while a few years later he clashed violently with his neighbour Richard Strode*, who had broken into his close at Loughtor, smashed the gate and the windows of his house into small pieces and let cattle graze on his land. For his part, Strode’s kinsman William claimed that it had been Selman and his associates who had been in the wrong, breaking into the close which was rightfully his and seizing ten horses, 12 oxen, ten cows, eight bullocks, 200 ewes and 60 lambs, altogether worth £300. The dispute had by this date a long history, for the land, which had come to Selman by marriage, had been claimed by Strode in the early 1440s. CP40/718, rot. 115d; 800, rot. 148; 802, rot. 156; 804, rot. 65d. It seems that the MP’s younger namesake, William Selman of Exeter, was probably his nephew, rather than his son. He, who attempted to recover the family property from Richard Pree, to whom it had been sold by the childless John Selman*, married Felicity, wid. of the prominent lawyer and Devon county coroner John Kyrton: C1/36/86; 54/178; CP40/820, rot. 105d; KB27/831, rex rot. 30.