SPARHAM (SPERHAM), John, of Derby.

John Sparham was probably related to two others of the same name, a father and son, who in 1354 were living at Rolleston, Staffordshire, some eight miles from Derby.Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xv. 166. In the autumn of 1399 he was charged with other Derbyshire men for using threatening behaviour towards Robert Trewelove, and it was as ‘of Derbyshire’ that, in February 1403, he went surety at the Exchequer for the lessees of the alien priory of Lapley, Staffordshire. Sparham attended the Derby borough elections for the Parliament of 1411, and served there as a juror in March 1414 at the investigations into lollardy. Later in 1414 he sold two messuages situated in the town, and 12 years after this he conveyed another dwelling and 20 acres of land there to Elias Stokkes. In the meantime, in 1422, described as ‘of Derby, husbandman’, Sparham had taken out a royal pardon of his outlawry in the court of common pleas resulting from failure to answer in a suit for debt brought by the abbot of Leicester.CCR, 1399-1402, p. 98; CFR, xii. 196; C219/10/6; KB9/204/1 m. 63; CP25(1)39/43/2, 44/10; CPR, 1416-22, p. 358.