TOPPE, Robert

A prominent figure in the turbulent politics of mid fifteenth-century Norwich, Toppe was a wealthy mercer who became a freeman of Norwich in Henry V’s reign. Norwich ‘Old Free bk.’, NCR 17c, f. 45, records that he became a freeman in 1417-18, but the treasurers’ acct., 1420-1, NCR 7c, gives 1420-1 as the date of his admission. He was the owner of Dragon Hall, a hall house in Conisford ward which he bought in the 1430s and extensively rebuilt and enlarged. Used as a cloth warehouse as well as a residence, it gave him immediate access to the river Wensum. Not long before he died his business needs prompted him to lease a pair of cranes next to his tenement in ‘Trous Street’ from the corporation. B. Ayers, Bk. of Norwich, 80; R.H. Frost, ‘Aldermen of Norwich, 1461-1509’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1996), 122; Norwich assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 65v. See Ayers, colour plate 11, for an interior shot of the hall’s crown-post roof, part of Toppe’s rebuilding work. Like other Norwich merchants he traded through Great Yarmouth, and in the late 1440s he used that port to export cloth (on ships from Bishop’s Lynn, Dunkirk and elsewhere) and to import a variety of merchandise. E122/149/9.

Toppe invested much of his income in land and was active in the city’s property market in the mid fifteenth century. C1/135/94; Paston Letters, i. 241. When he was assessed for a royal income tax in February 1451 his real property was reckoned to bring him an income of £20 p.a., making him first in wealth of Norwich’s taxpayers, although after his death it was claimed that the yearly income from his Norwich holdings alone amounted to twice that sum. R. Virgoe, ‘Norwich taxation list of 1451’, Norf. Archaeology, xl. 149; A. King, ‘Merchant Class in Late Med. Norwich’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1989), table between pp. 222 and 223. His wealth and status were such that in 1465, not long before he died, he was distrained for knighthood. He was also accorded the style of ‘esquire’ in a royal pardon he obtained in the same year. C67/45, m. 5. ‘Gentleman’ was one of his aliases in his pardon of 1443. In a third pardon (12 Feb. 1458) he is simply described as a citizen and alderman: CPR, 1441-6, p. 189; C67/42, m. 21. No doubt his wealth helped him to secure the hand of his second wife, the daughter of Sir John Knyvet, since the Knyvets had become embroiled in a prolonged (and no doubt expensive) dispute with the Ogard family over the estate of her uncle, Sir John Clifton. The match allowed Toppe to associate with the upper ranks of the Norfolk gentry: the widow of Sir Simon Felbrigg, Margaret Paston and ‘other jantyll-women’ dined at his house on one occasion in the summer of 1451. R. Virgoe, ‘Buckenham Disputes’, Jnl. Legal Hist. xv. 23-31; Paston Letters, i. 243. He appears to have enjoyed a generally good relationship with the well-known Pastons, in spite of falling out with Margaret’s mother-in-law, Agnes, widowed mother of John*, later in the same decade. CP40/795, rot. 341d. Notwithstanding his differences with Agnes, in the early 1460s he enjoyed the services of the Pastons’ servant, James Gresham, whom he employed as an attorney in the court of common pleas at Westminster. CP40/800, rot. 126.

Having begun his administrative career by 1427, when appointed one of the treasurers of Norwich, Toppe rose rapidly up the civic hierarchy. It is possible that he was already one of the aldermen of Mancroft ward when elected to the shrievalty three years later, and he began his first term in the mayoralty as early as 1435. Normally, a citizen who served as mayor would have to wait about a quarter of a century before attaining that office. King, 191-2. Further evidence of his importance (and no doubt considerable administrative ability) is the fact that he was elected mayor on no fewer than four occasions (more than any other citizen during Henry VI’s reign), Cozens-Hardy and Kent, 19-28. and sat in five Parliaments.

In the first of these assemblies Toppe’s fellow MP was Thomas Wetherby*, the leader of one of the city’s political factions. Little more than a month after that Parliament was dissolved, the two men took opposite sides at the controversial mayoral election of 1437. Shortly after the election, Wetherby and others certified that their opponents, with the help of a large mob, had prevented them from taking part. The certificate alleged that Toppe had helped to direct the mob to attack Wetherby and his allies, among them the city’s recorder, John Heydon*, and that one of Toppe’s servants, Richard Boteler, had ‘made assaute’ on Wetherby himself. KB9/229/1/106. On 15 June Toppe and nine other leading citizens whom the certificate accused of misconduct appeared before the King’s Council and were commanded, under pain of £1,000 each, to wait upon it until further notice. PPC, v. 33. In July the Council revoked the city’s liberties and exiled Toppe to Bristol; although it also sent Wetherby and two of his supporters away from Norwich. Just over a month later, Toppe was allowed to move back to within ten miles of his home city, to await the King’s permission to return. CPR, 1436-41, p. 76; PPC, v. 45; CCR, 1435-41, p. 94. He had almost certainly resumed residence there by the following Hilary term, when he made a personal appearance in King’s bench. He came to the court bearing a writ of the privy seal, dated 29 Nov. 1437, which informed the judges that the King (who had already restored the city’s liberties earlier that month) had suspended all process against him and others in connexion with the disputed election. KB27/707, rex. rot. 4. For Toppe this was not the last of the matter, since at the end of the decade John Heydon sued him and other aldermen in the common pleas for assault and menaces at the election. CP40/712, rot. 124. In July 1439 a jury found the defendants guilty of making threats but not of the alleged assault, and awarded Heydon the substantial sum of 400 marks in damages and costs. Not surprisingly, Toppe and his co-defendants took legal action in King’s bench against the jurors (who included Robert Chaplain*, a supporter of Wetherby, and Sir Thomas Tuddenham*, an associate of Heydon) for allowing their opponent such an excessive sum, although for some reason they failed to pursue their suit. KB27/715, rot. 62.

It is perhaps a sign of a decline in Wetherby’s influence in Norwich’s affairs that both of the city’s MPs in the Parliament of 1439, Toppe and William Ashwell*, were his opponents. They were assigned daily wages of 2s. each, significantly less than the 3s. 4d. per day allowed to Toppe in 1437. The reduction was undoubtedly due to a decline in the corporation’s resources: at this date the city’s treasury was nearly empty and it is likely that Toppe was still waiting for the wages due to him (£12) for his first Parliament. It is also very doubtful that he was promptly paid for attending the Commons of 1439, since Ashwell was still waiting for his wages (which came to £9 for each man) in June 1451. Norwich chamberlains’ accts. NCR 18a, ff. 213v, 215; KB27/760, rot. 40. The Parliament of 1439 sat until mid or late February 1440 and just over three months later Toppe was elected to another term as mayor. Several months into his second mayoralty, the corporation authorized Gregory Draper* and others to pursue a suit in the Exchequer for the return of £100 which the city had lent the King some five years earlier. When the duke and duchess of Gloucester visited Norwich shortly afterwards it decided to give the duke a present of 40 marks from this money, but gaining his favour hardly made up for the offence the citizens had caused the King with their Exchequer suit. The duke of Norfolk also visited Norwich during Toppe’s second term as mayor. He told Toppe that he was seeking a new loan for the Crown, but a city assembly declared that Norwich was too ‘desolate of everything’ to raise a large sum. F. Blomefield, Norf. iii. 147; Norwich assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 14.

The early 1440s were a difficult time for the city in other respects, since by then its long-running jurisdictional disputes with the prior of Norwich and other ecclesiastical figures were coming to a head. In the summer of 1441, shortly after Toppe’s second mayoralty had ended, the prior obtained a special commission of oyer and terminer charged with investigating offences committed through a lack of good governance on the part of the corporation. Maddern, 193. One of the indictments taken by the commissioners, who sat at Thetford in late July, related to Toppe’s time as mayor. It was alleged that in the previous March he had ordered the arrest of John Everard, even though Everard was inside the church of St. Martin at Palace at the time. It was at Thetford that the prior of Norwich and abbot of Wendling brought bills for trespass and contempt against Toppe and other members of the corporation for encroaching on their jurisdictional rights. KB9/240/26d, 27d; Norwich ‘Bk. of Pleas’, NCR 17b, ff. 5-6v, 8. In October the corporation (no doubt facing pressure from outside) agreed to submit its quarrels with the prior and other ecclesiastical figures to the arbitration of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, and Toppe and other leading citizens bound themselves to accept whatever decision he might make. Maddern, 194; Norwich docs. relating to legal disputes, c.1442, NCR 9c/13.

The earl of Suffolk’s award of 23 June 1442 solved nothing, since it proved extremely unpalatable for most of the citizens. Rather than accept Suffolk’s decision the corporation temporized; but matters came to a head on 25 Jan. 1443 when the civic authorities met to discuss whether finally to seal the award. The assembly ended in chaos after a group of citizens seized the common seal, and there followed a week of disturbances (subsequently known as ‘Gladman’s Insurrection’) directed against Norwich priory, prompting the Crown to confiscate the city’s liberties for a second time. Toppe was heavily implicated in the disturbances. He and other aldermen were accused of having plotted an insurrection and of aiding and abetting those who took the seal. He was additionally accused of having helped a band of men to break into the prior of Norwich’s house and close, from which they took two fetters and a pair of stocks. Toppe’s first wife, Alice, was also said to have taken part in planning a rising, and on the following 27 July she, her husband and their son, Robert Toppe junior, received a joint pardon from the Crown. Maddern, 196-7; Recs. Norwich, p. cxi; KB9/84/1/3, 10; CPR, 1441-6, p. 189. Despite their pardon, Toppe and Agnes were expected to answer for their actions in King’s bench later that year, KB27/730, rex rot. 19d. and he was dismissed as a j.p.

Any disgrace Toppe incurred for his part in the troubles of 1443 was short-lived, for in December that year the Crown granted him the favour of an exemption for life from further office-holding. The same grant also excused him from having to accept the honour of knighthood, an indication that he had acquired a significant amount of land by this date. CPR, 1441-6, p. 225. Despite his exemption, he was returned to his third Parliament just over a year later. His fellow MP was Thomas Ingham*, who had sided with Wetherby in 1437 and had suffered assault and imprisonment at the hands of the rioters during Gladman’s Insurrection. If there was any personal animosity between the two MPs, they were still able to work together for the good of their city. Their primary duty was to seek the return of Norwich’s liberties (the corporation granted them an extra £4 on top of their parliamentary wages to help fund their efforts in this regard), Norwich chamberlains’ accts. NCR 18a, f. 229. although they must have taken an interest in a statute regulating the weaving of worsted cloth in Norfolk and Norwich. PROME, xi. 477-9. Toppe and Ingham left for Westminster on 22 Feb. 1445, three days before the assembly opened. They were accompanied by the scrivener, Walter Jeffreys, who possessed a ‘great understanding’ of Norwich’s evidences, and during the Parliament they were also advised by the lawyers, Walter Moyle* and John Jenney*. Early in the second session, which ran from 29 Apr. to 5 June, John Intwood (one of the sheriffs of Norwich) and Thomas Grafton came up to London, and participated in a meeting between the two MPs and William de la Pole, by then marquess of Suffolk. Toppe and Ingham remained in London for several days after this session ended, for the purposes of seeking the good lordship of de la Pole and other lords, and it was perhaps during this period that they and Thomas Catworth* visited Ralph, Lord Cromwell, then one of the chamberlains of the Exchequer. This was not their only association with Catworth, whom the King appointed warden of Norwich before the Parliament ended, since they are also known to have delivered a bill on his behalf to the Lords. Norwich roll of debts claimed by Ingham’s sons, NCR 7d.

Despite the efforts of Toppe and Ingham, the liberties were not restored until December 1447, Recs. Norwich, p. xci. when Toppe was reappointed one of the city’s j.p.s. Just over a year later, he was returned to the Parliament of February 1449. The following Parliament was politically the more significant, since it witnessed the impeachment of the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, by then duke of Suffolk. It is unlikely that Toppe or many of his fellow citizens regretted Suffolk’s downfall, for the duke and his affinity featured prominently in the highly partisan indictments that several city juries presented to commissioners of oyer and terminer in the autumn of 1450. The jurors alleged that his retainers, Tuddenham and Heydon prominent among them, had maintained the suit which the prior of Norwich had begun against Toppe and other citizens in 1441; that de la Pole’s men had caused the bringing of false indictments against Toppe and fellow aldermen in the wake of the disturbances of 1443; and that Suffolk and his followers had threatened him and other leading citizens with hanging and extorted large sums of money from them. Ibid. i. 346-7; KB9/267/24; 272/5. Of about the same date as the indictments is a list of the city’s grievances against the duke and his men. Among its allegations was the claim that Heydon’s lawsuit over the mayoral election of 1437 had been unjustified and won through perjury. Norf. Archaeology, i. 295-9.

Despite growing political divisions in the country as a whole, Norwich’s troubles subsided after 1450 and Toppe’s later years were consequently quieter. During his third term as mayor the city received two royal visits. In October 1452 he announced a forthcoming visit by the King, in response to which a city assembly decided to levy a special tax to meet the costs of the occasion and gave orders for dealing with ‘nuisances’ in the streets. In the following April Queen Margaret came to Norwich, perhaps while on her way to Walsingham to give thanks for her pregnancy. Before her arrival the aldermen agreed to advance the city £40 towards the expense of receiving her, and Toppe contributed seven marks towards this sum. Norwich assembly bk. NCR 16d, ff. 17v, 18v; ‘Old Free Bk.’ NCR 17c, f. 18v. In late May 1453, shortly before his mayoralty came to an end, the corporation granted him a present of ten marks (over and above the £10 customarily given to mayors for their fee) as a reward for his ‘good labour’ in the office. Assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 19. Following his third term as mayor he was obliged to serve a term as alderman of the guild of St. George, in accordance with a recent settlement regulating the relationship between the guild (Norwich’s most important) and the corporation. He was also involved in negotiations with the prior of Norwich soon after leaving the mayoralty. By the late 1450s the responsibilities of office were evidently beginning to pall for Toppe. In March 1457 the corporation agreed to pay him no less than £72, partly in recompense for the great costs he had incurred on behalf of the city in the past and partly to pay off arrears of parliamentary wages owed to him. He forswore £32 of this sum, upon condition that he was excused from further service as an MP or as mayor. Ibid. ff. 19v, 30v. Of the remaining £40 owed to him, Toppe received nothing until Feb. 1462, when he was paid an instalment of £13: ibid. f. 30. Despite this, he was elected to yet another term as mayor just over a year later, although near the end of this term the corporation agreed that he should no longer have to attend any council meetings where his presence was not essential and again promised that he would never again be elected to Parliament. This was not the end of his administrative career, since when Norwich was obliged to respond to an anti-Yorkist commission of array in early 1460, he was one of those who assessed the city’s inhabitants for a tax which would pay for the men sought by the King. Ibid. ff. 40v, 42.

Within days of his accession a year later, Edward IV also demanded soldiers from Norwich. The city responded by levying a local tax to cover the costs of supporting these men and again Toppe was one of those who helped to assess it. Despite past promises, he was also elected to the first Parliament of Edward’s reign, initially summoned for 6 July 1461 but subsequently postponed for four months. Five days before the Parliament was originally due to open, the city agreed that he should have £10, in part payment of wages due to him for his attendance at previous Parliaments. Well in advance of leaving for Westminster, he and his fellow MP, Edward Cutler* (who had also experienced problems in securing parliamentary wages due to him in the past), sought assurance that they would receive prompt payment of their expenses. In the long recess between Parliament’s two sessions the corporation decided that Toppe and two other aldermen should have the profits of the common quay for a year, so that they could recover the debts the city owed them During the same recess he and Cutler were involved in discussions with the bishop of Norwich, who was trying to establish good relations between the city and Norwich priory. Ibid. ff. 48, 50, 51, 52; chamberlains’ acct, 1463-4, NCR 7e.

Having left his fifth Parliament, Toppe was at last largely free of administrative responsibilities, although he retained his status as an alderman and j.p. and remained active in his later years. His brother-in-law, John Knyvet, made him a feoffee of part of the Clifton inheritance (now finally wrested from the Ogards), in 1464, CPR, 1461-7, p. 323. and he attested his last parliamentary election three years later. In his will of 1467, Reg. Jekkys, ff. 97-99. Toppe asked to be buried in the church of St. Peter Mancroft, in a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist. He left 3s. 4d. to St. Peter’s and every other parish church in Norwich, and he also made bequests to other religious institutions in the city and to each of its poor and elderly inhabitants. He also left sums to no fewer than 16 parishes outside Norwich for the repair of their churches and relief of their poor. Presumably he had a connexion, landed or otherwise, with these parishes, mainly situated in north Norfolk although also including Beccles and Bungay in Suffolk. He certainly possessed lands in the coastal settlements of Cromer in Norfolk and Lowestoft in Suffolk, which he ordered his executors to sell. His interests at Cromer appear to have caused him to clash with Agnes Paston, who sued him for trespassing on her lands there (which probably neighboured his) in the late 1450s. C1/210/22. Toppe also directed his executors to sell two of his messuages in Norwich, so as to provide the means to support two chaplains in St. Peter Mancroft. The chaplains were to pray for himself, as well as for his daughter, Agnes, and her husband, William Fen (originally from Great Yarmouth but a citizen of Norwich), both of whom had died within a matter of weeks of each other nearly 30 years earlier. Reg. Doke, ff. 140v-142. It is possible that Agnes was illegitimate, since she refers to Toppe as her ‘natural father’ in her will. Toppe also requested an annual service in the same church, in remembrance of himself, his parents and his first wife, as well as the two Fens and John Bixley† and his wife. He provided for Robert, his eldest son and heir, with the manor of Great Melton (purchased in 1450) and other lands to the west of Norwich, an estate which allowed the recipient to pursue the life of a gentleman rather than a career in trade. Blomefield, v. 16; Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Wolman, ff. 1v-2v. In the event, the younger Robert Toppe did not found a new landed family: following his death without legitimate issue in 1488, the Melton estate passed to his nephew, Gregory Lovell. The MP’s wife, Joan, was awarded a life interest in his residence and other properties in the parish of St. Peter Mancroft, as well as in holdings elsewhere in the city (including Le Aungell, an inn near Norwich cathedral) which were to go to their son, Godfrey, after her death. Toppe divided his plate and household utensils between Joan, who was to have half, and their four children, Godfrey and his three sisters, Alice, Ela and Anne. Godfrey was still a young boy in 1467, Born in 1459 or 1460: C1/210/31. and it is likely that Toppe’s daughters by Joan were also minors at this date. Alice was left lands at Trowse, just outside Norwich, and Anne, who subsequently married Henry Framlingham, and Ela received dowries of 200 marks and £100 respectively. M. Sayer, ‘Norf. Involvement in Dynastic Conflict’, Norf. Archaeology, xxxvi.317; C1/135/94. Not mentioned in the will is another Anne, one of Toppe’s daughters by his first wife, who had married the Norfolk esquire, Thomas Lovell, This marriage must have taken place bef. 1451, since Gregory, Lovell’s s. although Margaret, almost certainly one of the MP’s children by the same first marriage, received a messuage and five tenements inside the city. Toppe also remembered his brother, William, who lived in London, leaving him £20-worth of his moveable goods and his wife a silver chest which had once belonged to his mother. For his executors Toppe chose Joan, along with her nephew, William Knyvet†, two Norwich aldermen, Godfrey Joye and William Swayn, and a chaplain, John Whitterat. He also named two supervisors, (Sir) William Yelverton* and a former opponent, John Heydon, with whom evidently he had become reconciled. Added to the will is an undated codicil, in which he gave Joan permission, should she so wish, to sell Le Aungell and to invest the money raised from the sale in one or manors which would go to Godfrey after her own death.

Toppe was dead by 31 Mar. 1468 when the will was proved, and it was probably later that year that his executors drew up a list of the considerable debts owed to him at the end of his life. The debtors came from Norwich, Norfolk and Suffolk: those from Norwich owed nearly £200, those from Norfolk (including his brother-in-law, John Knyvet, who owed £18) over £160 and those from Suffolk over £40. Norf. RO, Dean and Chapter of Norwich recs., acct. roll of debtors of Robert Toppe, DCN 9/5. Not long after Toppe’s death, his widow married Richard Roos, who took up residence at the late MP’s house in Norwich. A younger brother of Thomas, 9th Lord Roos, he (like the Knyvets) was a supporter of Henry VI’s Readeption, and in 1471 commissioners acting on behalf of Edward IV broke into the house to seize his goods. They came away with perhaps as many as 19 cartloads of evidences, furniture and plate, but most of it belonged to Toppe’s estate. This incident featured in Chancery suits initiated by Sir William Knyvet (as he then was) in the mid 1490s. Knyvet claimed that the goods taken were worth 1,000 marks, and that he was unable to perform his duties as an executor because so much of Toppe’s estate was in the hands of others. Seaton, 39; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 193, 195; C1/54/187; 210/21-32. By this period the estate had already featured in other Chancery disputes. A few years after his death Roos and Joan had sued Swayn and Whiterrat for refusing to allow adequate maintenance to her children by the MP, and in about 1493 Toppe’s daughter, Anne, and her husband, Henry Framlingham, had successfully sued Knyvet, Whitterat and Joan for her dowry. C1/93/14; 135/94; CCR, 1485-1500, no. 746.