SMITH, John II

Although a Member of no fewer than six Parliaments, Smith’s extremely common name makes it difficult to distinguish him from his namesakes.1 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 776-7, asserts that the John Smith of Stratford who made his will in 1468 was certainly the MP, but this is mere supposition. It is impossible to prove that the MP was any of the men of that name who attested Suff. county elections during Hen. VI’s reign, or that it was he who was appointed surveyor of the search in Ipswich in 1431: CPR, 1429-36, p. 11. For example, two John Smiths (distinguished by the appellations ‘at Cros’ and ‘at Cay’ [quay]) attended the borough court at Ipswich in September 1434,2 Suff. RO (Ipswich), Ipswich bor. recs., C/2/11/1/1/1 (memo. of agreement for annual election of serjts., 1434). but it is not clear if either of them was the MP. Similarly, it is impossible to tell whether the parliamentarian was the merchant active in the borough by Henry V’s reign or, indeed, whether that burgess should be identified with the John Smith who was a merchant and vintner there in the 1440s.3 C241/221/27; C1/46/363; Add. 30158, f. 14. There was also a John Smith of Ipswich ‘gentleman’, who served John de Vere, 12th earl of Oxford, as a secretary and received a royal pardon as such in May 1456.4 C67/41, m. 1. Possibly it was this de Vere servant who filed a Chancery bill against Robert Wimbill† between 1459 and the mid 1460s over an allegedly vexatious suit that Wymbill had brought in the borough’s ct.: C1/29/361. However, he was not the only John Smith linked with the earl, whose servants had included at least four men of that name in the 1440s: ex inf. Dr James Ross. One of them served with de Vere as a man-at-arms in France in 1441: E101/53/33. The parliamentarian cannot, however, have been the burgess of that name who served an apprenticeship under John Deken*, since that John Smith did not gain the freedom of Ipswich until 1449, over a decade and a half after the MP first entered Parliament.5 N.R. Amor, Late Med. Ipswich, 134.

MP was nevertheless a resident burgess, identified as such in the borough’s records at the time of his election to the Commons of 1447.6 N. Bacon, Annalls of Ipswiche ed. Richardson, 104. Prior to this date, the indentures attesting his return to the Parliaments of 1433 and 1437 provide the only definite references to him. Ipswich chamberlains’ account of 1446-7 shows that he and William Rydout*, the other Member for the borough in 1447, were each paid 26s. 8d. for their expenses while attending the brief Parliament of that year. ( same chamberlains’ account records that the borough laid out 14d., partly on a breakfast for its bailiffs and John Smith, perhaps the MP, and partly on the latter’s costs and expenses when he rode to London on the town’s business.)7 Ipswich bor. recs., chamberlains’ acct., 1446-7, C/3/3/1/1. At the end of 1448, however, the borough authorities ordered that Smith should receive 20 marks for his service in Parliament, a sum which probably represented arrears of wages rather than an additional award.8 Bacon, 106. He did not receive it all at once, since in the following January John James, a fellow burgess, offered to pay the five marks of this sum which were still outstanding, provided that he was reimbursed from the rent the town received from the farmers of its common marsh.9 Add. 30158, f. 12v. In the same month the borough paid Smith and William Weathereld* £3 6s. 8d. each for their parliamentary wages, so it is possible that they had sat together in the Parliament of 1445, an assembly for which there are no surviving returns. Smith was again elected to the Commons in the autumn of 1449. Some of its business must have been of particular interest to him, since it directly concerned Ipswich. assembly assigned £300 from the customs revenues of the borough to the Household and exempted the town from the Act of Resumption it passed. It also licensed the merchants of the Calais staple to export wools and woolfells from several ports, including Ipswich.10 PROME, xii. 91, 136, 157. Smith was again returned as one of the burgesses for Ipswich to the following two Parliaments. On both occasions he was chosen as a representative before the formal election took place. In 1450 the borough selected him and Gilbert Debenham I* on 8 Sept.,11 Bacon, 107. although they were not actually returned until 29 Oct. Likewise, on 23 Feb. 1453 the borough chose Smith and Edmund Wynter II* to serve as its MPs in the Parliament of that year, four days before the formal election took place.12 Ibid. 110. Bacon mistakenly gives the ‘Friday bef. St. Matthew’ (15 Sept. 1452) as the date of the informal election in 1453, instead of the Friday bef. St. Matthias (the following 23 Feb.). Legislation concerning Ipswich was also passed in the Parliaments of 1450 and 1453, for the town was exempted from another Act of Resumption in 1450, and the queen was assigned an annual sum of 50 marks from its fee farm in the latter assembly.13 PROME, xii. 200, 301.

It is possible that the MP should be identified with the John Smith, burgess of Ipswich, who died intestate before 1468. In pleadings of Easter term that year, John Lambe, an embroiderer from London, sought a debt of £20 arising from a bond that the deceased had entered into with him at London in March 1455. The defendant was Thomas Bevyr, parson of Christchurch, Bristol, who had taken on the administration of Smith’s estate in association with the latter’s widow, Agnes.14 CP40/827, rot. 368d. It is likely that the deceased was related to the John Smith ‘the younger’ of Ipswich who had succeeded his father and namesake by the late 1460s. The younger John was probably the merchant who played an active part in the affairs of the borough during the second half of the fifteenth century.15 C1/32/322; CFR, xx. 95, 96, 97; Howard Household Bks. ed. Crawford, i. 342, 344, 348; Add. 30158, ff. 33v, 35; Amor, 265, 278. Whether the yr. John should be identified with the John Smith ‘junior’ whom Richard, duke of York, appointed receiver of his honour of Clare in Norf., Suff., Hunts., Cambs. and Essex, and of his lordships in Kent, Surr. and Suss., must remain a matter for speculation: E159/237, recorda Hil. rot. 4.