ABBOTSLEY, John, of Huntingdon.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

m. Katherine, prob. 1s.1

Offices Held

Coroner, Huntingdon by Feb. 1437.2

Biography

Nothing is known of Abbotsley before his first return to Parliament, in 1420, but between then and 1427, the date of his next appearance in the Commons, he attended at least four parliamentary elections in the borough, being on hand at those of 1432 and 1437 as well. His appointment as one of the local coroners during this period, no less than his inclusion on the list of Huntingdonshire gentry who were to take the general oath of May 1434 that they would not support anyone disturbing the peace, suggests that he may, perhaps, have been a lawyer with a modest practice in the Huntingdon area. Certainly, from 1426 onwards, he witnessed a number of deeds there and was involved in various property transactions, including the conveyance of a tenement belonging to the distinguished lawyer, Roger Hunt*.3

It is now difficult to disentangle his own interests from those of the people whom he assisted as a feoffee, but some time after his death, in about 1460, his trustees were sued in the court of Chancery by William Moigne over the ownership of a messuage in Huntingdon called The Crown. Moigne then claimed to have handed over one quarter of the purchase price of £200, and to have given ample sureties for the rest, but still to have been denied entry to the premises. It looks very much as if the John Abbotsley who served successively as coroner and bailiff of Huntingdon during the 1450s and was still alive when this lawsuit first started was the MP’s son.4

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: E.M. Wade

Notes

Variants: Albotesle, Albotysle.

  • 1. C1/29/43.
  • 2. Add. Ch. 33545.
  • 3. CPR, 1429-36, p. 376.
  • 4. Add. Chs. 33533-4, 33542, 33545, 33550; C1/29/43; Hunts. Feet of Fines (Cambridge Antiq. Soc. xxxvii), 110.