SQUIBBE, Robert

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 435.

While up at Westminster for the first recorded time as a Member of the Commons, Squibbe acted as an attorney in the court of common pleas for a man from his home town of Shaftesbury. CP40/635, att. rot. 1. In 1435 he appeared in the same court in person to bring a suit against John Bydyk of Gillingham, described as a gentleman or husbandman, for a debt of £40. He claimed that two years earlier Bydyk had undertaken under bonds for this amount to serve as bailiff of the manor of Gillingham for a year, during which time he would levy and collect revenues on Squibbe’s behalf, but he had failed to do so. CP40/696, rot. 398; 699, rots. 26d, 565d. Gillingham formed part of the estates held by Henry IV’s widow, Joan of Navarre, for whom Squibbe had served as an estate official for at least four years in the 1420s. However, in a suit brought in Chancery on behalf of Queen Joan in 1436 over the annual farm payable to her from the borough of Shaftesbury, he acted as an attorney not for the queen but rather for the defendant, the abbess of Shaftesbury abbey. C44/27/12.

A lawsuit of 1438 reveals that Squibbe also received an income from sheep-farming. He accused a husbandman and a shepherd of breaking his closes at ‘Asshemere’ in Dorset, and attacking 40 of his ewes with their dogs, so that 20 died and 20 aborted. He claimed that each ewe was worth £2, and valued the crops taken at the same time at £5. CP40/708, rot. 379.