SHERWIND, Nicholas, of Southampton.

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

Sept. 1388

Family and Education

?1s.

Offices Held

Bailiff, Southampton Mich. 1370-1.1

Searcher, Southampton Water 23 July 1380-c.1391.

Biography

Sherwind held a considerable number of properties in Southampton. In 1367, for example, he purchased a house known as ‘Ronseval’ in St. Michael’s parish, a site and reversionary interests in a vault in the parish of the Holy Rood, and a tenement in French Street. Then, from about 1375, he leased a building in English Street from the hospital of St. Julian. In April 1377 he took out a mortgage of £63 6s.8d. on a house he had built on a plot purchased from Roger Mascall* on the east side of English Street, with a kinsman by marriage, John Polymond, who agreed to acquit him of two statutes merchant, the first in £120 owing to Stephen Haym of Winchester and Nicholas Taylor of Salisbury, the other in 20 marks due to William Sheringham*, the London mercer. Sherwind mortgaged this property again the following October, on this occasion for 100 marks and with Mascall and the rector of St. John’s acting as mortgagees; but as he found himself unable to repay the money in the allotted time the premises subsequently came into Mascall’s possession.2

Perhaps all this is an indication that Sherwind’s trading ventures were not going well. In 1371 he had been outlawed in the trusting court at London for failing to answer suits for debts amounting to £40, and six years later he was being sued by a Colchester merchant for £16. On the other hand, he had been making illegal profits between 1373 and 1377 through his association with Polymond and other Southampton men, who had allegedly forestalled victuals and merchandise worth about £200 shipped into the port.3 But such activities did not prevent his appointment by the Crown as searcher of Southampton Water, a post which he continued to hold for more than ten years. In the course of his term of office he was returned to the Cambridge Parliament. Sherwind is last heard of when re-appointed searcher in December 1390.

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

Otherwise Scherwynd.

  • 1. J.S. Davies, Hist. Southampton, 172.
  • 2. Southampton RO, SC4/2/102, 115-16, 118, 121; Queen’s Coll. Oxf. God’s House, R369, 371.
  • 3. CPR, 1370-4, p. 154; 1374-7, p. 421; 1377-81, p. 81. Richard Sherwind (d.1404), may have been Nicholas’s son: God’s House, D1090, R371.