SMART, Henry

When first mentioned in the records, in 1436, Smart already possessed lands in Hampshire valued for the purposes of taxation at £7 p.a., although where they were situated and how he had acquired them has not been discovered. At that date he was living in Gar Street, Winchester, probably in the capital tenement later known as ‘Lombard House’ in the parish of St. Clement. E179/173/92; D.J. Keene, Surv. Winchester (Winchester Studies, 2), ii. nos. 660-5. Although Smart’s occupation is not recorded, in later years he was styled ‘gentleman’, and it may be credibly speculated that he received some training in the law or estate administration. C67/42, m. 15; CCR, 1461-8, p. 153. The interpretation of his arms, depicted on a shield in a window of Winchester’s west gate, as being ‘silver, two glazier’s irons in saltire, sable; a crescent for difference; with a golden border inscribed scutum Henrici Smart’, led J.C. Wedgwood to assume he was a glazier by occupation (HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 776), but this is most unlikely. Nevertheless, there is nothing to show that he was ever engaged as an attorney in the central law-courts, and he seems to have appeared there only to bring pleas on his own account. Thus, in 1445 he sued Richard Kenle of Winchester and a local corveser for forcibly abducting one of his servants, and in 1461 he sued a tailor from Collingbourne Abbas, Wiltshire, for a debt of £4 and others for sums amounting to £10 13s. 4d. CP40/739, rot. 491; 800 rot. 159; CPR, 1476-85, p. 83.

Smart initially owed his prominent position in Winchester to his purchase, in 1451, of the considerable number of properties which the chaplain John Bolt had inherited from his late father, the prosperous clothier Richard Bolt. These holdings, described as 18 messuages, a fulling mill, a toft, five acres of arable land and one and a half acres of meadow in Winchester and Otterbourne, were settled in jointure on Smart and his wife, Ellen, the sale-price enabling John to raise money for pious works for his father’s soul. In February 1452, when final arrangements for the transfer were made, it was also agreed that after the death of John Bolt’s mother Smart would pay the chaplain a yearly rent of six marks for the rest of his life. Since John’s mother was also called Ellen, it looks as if she and Smart’s wife were the same person. CP25(1)/207/33/32; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 335-6, 504; Stowe 846, ff. 158v-159. Most of the Bolt properties were situated in Jewry Street, Tanner Street and Gar Street. Keene, ii. nos. 275-6, 429, 435, 448, 465, 667. Not content with this windfall, in 1453 Smart also acquired a tenement and garden in Wongar Street and four cottages in Calpe Street, Ibid. 597; Stowe 846, f. 155v. to which he subsequently added yet more buildings elsewhere in the city. These acquisitions placed him among the wealthiest members of the civic community. Keene, ii. nos. 229, 327, 336, 463, 554, 642, 656, 658.

Before his earliest election to Parliament Smart became acquainted with prominent lawyers from Hampshire, such as Robert Colpays*, with whom he was associated in 1444 as a feoffee of the property which Robert Chamberlain wished to pass on to his younger brother, William*, the former recorder of Southampton. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 205-6. In the same decade it looks as if he entered the employment of Hyde abbey in Winchester, perhaps as the steward of the abbatial estates, for in January 1446 he was engaged by Cardinal Beaufort and other trustees to deliver seisin to the abbey of a moiety of the manor of Freeland in Piddletrenthide, Dorset (previously belonging to John Jordan*); and he was a feoffee of more property in the same place which was similarly transferred to the abbot and convent 15 years later. Winchester Coll. muns. 14773, 14777, 14779. Significantly, it was in Hyde’s conventual church that Smart and his wife were eventually to be buried.

Smart began to be appointed to ad hoc commissions of local government in 1453, and on 13 Feb. 1455 he was among those instructed to find out who was responsible for the maintenance of Winchester gaol. Promptly, just six days later, he and Richard Hunt* conducted the necessary investigation. C145/315/10. So far, he had not been recorded taking any part in the administration of the city, and was still a member of the commons rather than of the elite 24, but on 9 June following he was exempted by the civic authorities from holding either of the two posts of bailiff, and it looks as if in return for this concession he had already agreed to serve in the Parliament summoned to assemble on 9 July. Richard Bowland*, the former mayor, stood surety for his attendance in the Commons, where his colleague Hunt joined him as one of the MPs for Portsmouth. Among the tasks he was asked to perform at Westminster was to secure for Winchester a grant of the alnage on cloth woven in the city; copies of letters patent, records relating to the alnage and other evidences were specially prepared for him to take with him to the Parliament. On 23 Jan. 1456, a few days after the opening of the third session, Smart was named one of the 18 members of the commons of Winchester who with 16 of the 24 were given full powers to govern the city in its present state of crisis. Smart eventually received £3 as his parliamentary wages. Negotiations with the government concerning the alnage took him to the capital again in 1457 or 1458, for which he was paid 20s. for his expenses. Black Bk. 85, 87; Winchester recs., W/E1/21, 22; C219/16/3.

Thereafter, Smart assumed an even more prominent role in the community. He was present at Winchester in 1462 for proceedings regarding the manor of Winnall, contested between John Humfray and his wife and the prior of St. Swithun’s, when the jury found the claim of the Humfrays was based on a forged deed, and in March 1467 he was one of four arbiters appointed to consider the veracity of allegations brought against another citizen, John Kent. A few months later he joined the small group empowered with the mayor to treat with Bishop Waynflete in an attempt to end the quarrel between the civic and ecclesiastical authorities caused by the obstruction of the channel at Coytebury which supplied water to the city’s mill. Reg. Common Seal (Hants Rec. Ser. ii), 397; Black Bk. 89, 93. Elected mayor in 1471, he received the customary payment of £2 to cover the costs incurred by riding to Westminster to take an oath of allegiance before the barons of the Exchequer. Winchester recs., W/E1/28. Smart may have proved to be a reformer, for during his mayoral term several civic ordinances were reconsidered, confirmed and granted anew. Black Bk. 65, 105, 106. Immediately after the end of his official year he was elected as an MP for the second time. The Parliament, summoned to assemble on 6 Oct. 1472, was not to be finally dissolved until March 1475, and at its close he and his fellow Member Richard Colnet† were each owed £31 16s. for their service for 318 days, at the prescribed rate of 2s. a day. The authorities encountered difficulties in collecting this sum, and when in May 1480 it was found that the MPs were still owed 36s. 8d. they made distraint on the goods and chattels of four of the recalcitrant inhabitants. The latter promptly recovered their possessions from the mayor and bailiffs by force, leaving the expenses of Smart and Colnet still in arrear. KB145/7/20. Meanwhile, Smart had been among the jurors pricked at sessions of the peace held at Winchester in November 1475, and at the parliamentary elections held on 2 Jan. 1478 he was one of the 12 men named on the indenture. KB9/110/5; C219/17/3. Also in 1478 he was enfeoffed of lands in Headbourne Worthy and elsewhere, which were destined for be conveyed to Winchester College. Winchester Coll. muns. 19866, 19868, 19871-2.

In his will, made on 10 Jan. 1489, Smart requested burial next to his wife’s tomb in the nave of Hyde abbey, and asked the monks to say a mass for his soul at the tenth hour of every day for one year. In the course of the previous five years he had leased out most of his properties by formal indentures, which he recited for the benefit of his three executors, who included his kinsman and principal heir, William Usher. Their relationship is not explained. He died before 22 May. PCC 32 Milles (PROB11/8, f. 252); Stowe 846, ff. 159-160v.