Family and Education

prob. s. of John Justice of Calne.1 m. Agnes.

Offices Held

Tax collector, Wilts. Dec. 1429.

Biography

Coming from a family established in Calne since the early 14th century,2 Justice is first recorded in 1402 as a juror at a local inquiry for assessing a tax. As a parishioner of Calne, he was one of those who reported on the state of the church at its visitations by the dean of Salisbury in 1405 and 1409. He stood surety for the attendance of Robert Salman at the Parliament of April 1414, and was present at the election of the knights of the shire for Wiltshire to the Parliament of 1426. In May 1427, along with Salman and other burgesses of Calne, he witnessed an enfeoffment of land there and in other places in Wiltshire, to Robert Long* and others. He served as a juror at an inquiry held in 1428 to assess the contribution of the hundred of Calne to a parliamentary levy, and in the following year was himself appointed a tax collector in the county generally. In 1434 Justice was one of those certified by the Wiltshire knights of the shire as liable to take the oath not to maintain men who broke the King’s peace. Nothing more is known until he stood surety for the appearance of John Cricklade as one of Calne’s representatives in the Parliament of 1442, a service he was to repeat in 1447, on this occasion for Thomas Cromer. Meanwhile, he had been among those, including several persons who at one time or another had represented Calne in the House of Commons, for whose welfare prayers were to be offered in a chantry founded in the parish church of Calne in 1446. He was again present at the shire elections to the Parliament of February 1449, but he probably died soon afterwards, for no more is heard of him.3

Justice’s wife, Agnes, survived him, retaining a life interest in his property, which consisted of ten houses and 120 acres of land in Calne and the nearby villages of Studley, Cherhill, Yatesbury and West Kennett.4

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: Charles Kightly

Notes

• 1. Prob. he who had paid 4d. towards Calne’s share of the 1379 poll tax: E179/195/52A.
• 2. Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxiii. 401; A.E.W. Marsh, Hist. Calne, 330.
• 3. Feudal Aids, v. 219, 247; Reg. John Chandler (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xxxix), 93, 263; C219/11/3, 13/4, 15/2, 4, 6; Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, i. 101; CPR, 1429-36, p. 371; 1441-6, p. 459.
• 4. C1/29/504.