Jorce is an obscure figure, although his family, seated at Burton Joyce, had produced leading members of the Nottinghamshire gentry in the 14th century, with estates at Nottingham, Gedling, Stoke Bardolf and Carlton, as well as property in Bakewell (Derbyshire) and Loughborough (Leicestershire). Sir Robert Jorce (d.1369), left as his heir his son William, who served as a j.p. in 1399-1401 and, retained as a King’s esquire, received a grant of 1s. per day at the Exchequer.
However, Jorce certainly had connexions with Nottingham. He witnessed a conveyance there in 1392 and as a ‘bowyer’, brought suits in the borough court in 1394. A year later Elias Stokkes of Derby was charged before the Nottinghamshire j.p.s. with ambushing John Jorce ‘of Nottingham’ in High Street, Bramcote (Warwickshire), in January 1394. By then a member of the town guild of the Holy Trinity, in 1408 Jorce became the guild’s chamberlain, but was subsequently charged with embezzlement of four marks of its funds. Yet, in other respects, he was regarded as sound: in 1396 he provided securities before the King’s bench for local men, and in 1408 and 1418 he acted as an attorney in the borough courts of Nottingham, one of his clients being an archer of the Crown, William Gresley. In the meantime, at the local elections of April 1413 he had found mainprise for the attendance in Parliament of Thomas Mapperley.