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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
Both Adam Fraunceys and John Pyel amassed a large stock of tenements and rents in London, although Fraunceys seems to have been the more assiduous and consistent in property dealing in the city. It is indeed quite likely that buying and selling real estate formed a major part of Fraunceys's business in London, and that medium- and long-term investment in these assets provided him with a not insignificant income. We may be led to such a conclusion, of course, because there is much more information concerning the property deals of both Fraunceys and Pyel than there is about their other entrepreneurial ventures, but the scale and frequency of these transactions, certainly in the case of Adam Fraunceys, are evidence that he attached considerable importance to them. Here, too, there was a divergence between Fraunceys and Pyel. Although from early on Pyel was ready to co-operate with Fraunceys in the acquisition of property in London, he only came later in life to purchase property there on his own account. This is consistent with the generally detached attitude he seems to have assumed towards the city, until political commitment and financial involvement made his recular presence in the capital unavoidable.
114 Other sources include Fraunceys's will, also enrolled in Hustings, some entries in the Close and Patent Rolls and a few charters in the British Library and Public Record Office. For a general guide to records of London property see Keene, D. and Harding, V. ‘Sources for Property Holdings in London before the Great Fire’ (London Record Society, xxii, 1985)Google Scholar. For the properties in Cheapside and Poultry I have been able to make extensive use of the work produced by the Museum of London Social and Economic Survey of London under the direction of Dr Derek Keene.
115 CLRO HR 77/260, 252, 264.
116 HR 80/7; 91/114.
117 P23. The five which can be located correspond to SESML tenements 132/15, 17–20 (Walbrook, iv, fig. A, and pp. 89–92, 103–28).Google Scholar
118 SESML 132/20 was sold by Fraunceys in June 1370 (HR 98/67); the rent from 132/18 and the tenements 132/17, 19 were bequeathed in Fraunceys's will to Agnes his widow, with reversion to his son, Adam junior (HR 103/79).
119 HR 83/98.
120 Walbrook, 10.Google Scholar
121 BL Harl. Chs. 58.C.31, 50.D.53, 50.D.52.
122 HR 96/137; 100/38 (see SESML 11/1a, 11/3 in Cheapside, 19–23, 47–8, fig.L).Google Scholar
123 CWCH ii, 40.Google Scholar
124 HR 96/137–9.
125 HR 100/38; 102/3.
126 Thrupp, , Merchant Class, 353.Google Scholar
127 HR 96/60, 69.
128 HR 89/69, 71; 95/40–1; will of Adam Fraunceys, HR 103/79. See also Cheapside, 255–6 and fig. L (SESML 145/20).Google Scholar
129 Ibid., liv, lvii.
130 SESML 11/1a (Cheapside, 19).Google Scholar
131 SESML 132/15 (Walbrook, 89–91).Google Scholar
132 HR 98/67.
133 Walbrook, 15.Google Scholar
134 HR 96/170. For Halden, city recorder and Sussex gentleman, see 1 (ii).
135 HR 100/6.
136 HR 96/76–8; 89/130.
137 Walbrook, 6.Google Scholar
138 Mainly butchers and fishmongers who occupied most of the seventy-one spaces for stalls in 1358–9 (ibid.).
139 Dr Keene has observed that despite a general long-term reduction in the demand for land in London as elsewhere after the Black Death, the short-term prospects for the property market in the city, especially in an area like Walbrook, were not so gloomy. While a number of houses and shops fell into disuse, demand for those remaining habitable increased, and there is evidence that the rental values of some properties in the Poultry area actually rose between c.1360 and c.1380, roughly the period when Fraunceys and Pyel were active in the land market (ibid., 20).
140 HR 87/101.
141 P1, 3.
142 Harrison, D., ‘The Surrey Portion of the Lewes Cartulary’, Trans. Surrey Archaeological Collections, xliii (1935), 97.Google Scholar
143 See below.
144 HR 96/123; 101/81.
145 HR 102/53. Pyel and Fraunceys had received a second quit-rent of 4s in this parish from the Anketil estate (P9). For the Anketil properties, see below.
146 HR 75/51–2.
147 HR 99/127, P20.
148 HR 100/38, 119.
149 HR 96/69.
150 HR 81/72; 99/87; HPL 20 July 1360; HR 99/165–6.
151 HR 99/33, 42.
152 HR 101/119.
153 HR 101/99. Two of these came from Northamptonshire, John Molkous, son of Robert Molkous, one of Pyel's neighbours in Irthlingborough, and Richard Cros of Cransley. It is possible that these men had come to London under his patronage. The third was John Watlyngton, the city's common crier (see Masters, Betty R., ‘The Mayor's Household before 1600’ in Studies in London History, 104Google Scholar). There was evidently some dispute concerning the conveyance of part of this property, which was eventually resolved in Pyel's favour (HR 102/61, LPA 135, p. 50).Google Scholar
154 HR 104/1.
155 HR 101/99; 102/61 (SESML 145/6, see Cheapside, 75–6).Google Scholar
156 HR 97/109; 102/190 (SESML 32/10a); SESML Interim Report on the Study of the Bank of England Area (07, 1988), 5–8Google Scholar. I am most grateful to Dr Derek Keene for allowing me to see a copy of this report.
157 PRO Ancient Charters E210/1712, CPR 1370–4, 49–50.Google Scholar
158 HR 112/66. See below n.191.
159 HR 95/130–1.
160 HR 103/299, 300. Both were sold on 16 April 1380, the lands to John Aubrey, grocer and son-in-law of Adam Fraunceys, and the quit rent to another grocer, John Chircheman (HR 108/122–3). Pyel's three associates were John Ussher, chaplain and fellow executor of Adam Fraunceys, Thomas de Santon, probably also a clerk, and William Hildeslee.
161 HR 80/7; 99/81; 99/33, 42; 102/136–7.
162 HR 103/205.
163 HR 104/39; 107/89.
164 HR 99/165–7.
165 HR 96/212–3.
166 HR 96/76–8; 97/88; 101/27, 40.
167 HR 97/130.
168 Not Sir John Poultney, the former mayor, who also died at about this time.
169 P4–5.
170 P6.
171 P7.
172 SESML 132/20.
173 P43.
174 CCR 1360–4, 302, 322Google Scholar; 1364–8, 12–13.
175 CPR 1370–4, 281–3Google Scholar; HR 101/67.
176 HR 103/24, 26, 97–8.
177 R-H. Hilton, for example, found from a sample of towns in the Midlands from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries that there were few individual accumulations of urban land and that those which existed seldom yielded sufficient income to provide adequate financial support for the purchasers. It was the large institutions, religious guilds, chantry foundations, monasteries, which tended to own the larger blocks of urban property (‘Some Problems of Urban Real Property in the Middle Ages’ in Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism (London, 1985), 165–74).Google Scholar
178 HR 92/192.
179 This also includes the rents in Dowgate ward (Fraunceys's will, HR 103/79).
180 PRO Inquisitions Post Mortem C138/29.
181 BL Harl. Ch. 50.D.52.
182 Riley, , Memorials of London, 289.Google Scholar
183 Fraunceys's will, HR 103/79.
184 Ibid.
185 Chew, H.M., ‘Mortmain in Medieval London’, EHR lx (1945), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
186 Raban, S., Mortmain Legislation, 103–4.Google Scholar
187 Above, 2 (ii).
188 Riley, , Memorials of London, 289.Google Scholar
189 C138/29.
190 Hence the enfeoffinent of Pyel, William Walworth, Nicholas Brembre, John Ussher and others in the lands of Walter Tudenham by his executors, which were leased back to his widow for a rose in August 1375. By December Joan Tudenham had evidently died and the lands were sold off or else new trustees were enfeoffed (HR 103/200–1, 302).
191 HR 95/130–1; 112/66. Although the quitclaim was made to Joan Pyel and the executors of Adam Fraunceys, the properties eventually went to endow Irthlingborough college.
192 HR 98/67, 69.
193 P20; HR 99/127.
194 SESML Bank of England Report, 5–8.Google Scholar
195 Isolated acquisitions continue, such as a grant of sixty acres of land in Irthling-borough in Easter 1376 by Ralph de Hale (CP25(1) 178/85 no. 691), but the main body of the estate was formed by 1369.
196 Joan Pyel's will: Lambeth Palace, Episcopal Register of Thomas Arundel ii, f. 161v.
197 PRO SC12/37/13.
198 HR 112/66; 116/68.