Family and Education

m. 1s.

Offices Held

Jurat, Rye Aug. 1412-14; mayor 1424-5, ?1428-9.1

Biography

Piers was a juror at an inquest into an admiralty suit held at Rye in July 1406. In about 1413 he contributed to a scot levied in the town. Between 1410 and 1421 he held land at Udimore, Knelle and Hope (Sussex), on which as a Portsman he claimed exemption from taxation, and besides these he acquired some marshland from William atte Vawte* in 1413.2

When mayor in April 1425, Piers presided at an assembly which passed ordinances restricting the admission of outsiders to the liberty of Rye and curtailed their opportunities for trading there. He died before May 1441, when his son, John, made a conveyance of a messuage, two acres of land and a plot known as ‘Bernardsfield’ which had once belonged to him.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: A. P.M. Wright

Notes

• 1. Rye Corporation mss, 77/1, 2; Cat. Rye Recs. ed. Dell, 57/1, f. 60. He is recorded as mayor in June 6 Hen. IV (1428), but Stephen Bevers is given as mayor in Feb. and early Aug. 1428 (Cat. Rye Recs. 122/6, 136/184; Rye Corporation ms, 33/7, f. 38), so Piers’s second term may have been from Aug. 1428 to 1429 (for which year no other mayor is known) rather than from 1427 to 1428.
• 2. E101/67/23, no. 83; Rye Corporation ms, 77/2; E179/225/34, 36, 38, 40, 42; Cat. Rye Recs. 122/4.
• 3. Rye Corporation ms, 57/1, ff. 60-61; Cat. Rye Recs. 122/9.