Note 365 — HISTORY OF LYNN. PART III.

The documents or papers above referred to, consist of 1. a Letter from John Wentworth mayor of Lynn to the king (Hon. iv.) dated on St. Martin’s day 1403, and complaining of the opposite party, as outrageous persons who committed the most horrid crimes, and proceeded in the most riotous manner against their opponents, with the intent to spoil and rob them of their goods, burn their houses, slay and dismember their persons, &c. It is not the first letter he wrote to his majesty, for he refers to others of anterior date. Those however are lost, or we might possess a more correct knowledge of this business. The second of those papers is a Letter from Petipas, then mayor, to some of his friends, complaining of Wentworth and his adherents and assentaunts for troubling him in the discharge of his duty, and requiring them “be bille or be mouthe” [by letter or by word of mouth] to acquaint his reverend lord of Norwich [i.e. the bishop] with the affair, and solicit his interference. &c. Its date is 1413, the first of Henry V.—The third is from the same, and seemingly to the same, and written, it is presumed, in 1414, the former part of which was the latter part of his 2nd year, for he was then mayor two years successively. The fourth was from Thomas Hunt, who became mayor in the autumn of 1415 to Johan Spencer, viscount de Norff. [i.e. the High Sheriff of the county] and is dated “atte Lenn ye tede day of the mone of Juylet, ye yere of ye regne of King Henry ye fyft ye ferth:” which was A.D. 1416. This curious paper complains of Thomas Felwell, goldsmith, who had been indicted for his misdeeds, as an instigator of a rysing and ryot—also of Thomas Hardell, and Thomas Enemethe, “and very many of the misdoers resorten and drawen again in counsailles to Barth. Petipas in sustenance of his p. tie,” &c. It also offers the said Viscount, or high sheriff, a present of a young He-Bear, which seems a queer circumstance. But what makes this paper of most importance, is its confirming, along with the other documents, the very distracted state of the town at that period.—The fifth is addressed “to the lord bishopp of Norwich” (the above John de Wakeryng it seems.) “from his owen humblest tenants and devout Bedesmen, the Mayre and good men of his town of Lenne Bishopp.” Its date is the 9 of March, the 3rd of Henry V. which seems to answer to A.D. 1415, or 1415–16, and the mayor was probably the above Thomas Hunt.—The sixth and last of those papers was a royal injunction or mandate from “Henry (VI.) by the Grace of God king of England and of France and lord of Ireland unto the Mair of the town of Lenne Byshopp;” and relates chiefly, as was before hinted, to some irregularity or neglect in the choice of the 24 Jurats, directing and enjoining that they should be freemen and lawful, and of the most discreet, sufficient, and least suspicious persons of the said town; and each of them possessing property in lands and tenements to the amount of C. S (i.e. one hundred shillings) a year—equal no doubt to more than 100l. a year now: also directing that in case any of the 24 Jurats happened to die in the course of the year, others equally unexceptionable should be immediately chosen in their room, &c.—As a sample of the style and orthography of the magistrates of Lynn 400 years ago, and a specimen of their mode of address to their prelatical lord and master, we shall here subjoin the mayor and aldermen’s Letter to bishop Wakeryng.