JOP, alias BOKELLY, Nicholas, of Bokelly in St. Kew, Cornw.

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

Mar. 1416

Family and Education

m. by 1400, Alice, da. of Roger Harry, ?1s.1

Offices Held

Commr. of inquiry, Devon, Cornw. Nov. 1409, Nov. 1410, Sept. 1413 (the ransoming of prisoners in Brittany), Feb. 1416.

Biography

This Nicholas Bokelly is clearly to be distinguished from he who sat for Bodmin in the first Parliament of 1371 and served on a royal commission in Cornwall in 1386. Our Member (using the name Jop) was a tenant of several properties in Cornwall belonging to Thomas Paderda*, but he mainly lived on the manor of Bokelly in the parish of St. Kew, and it was as Nicholas Bokelly that in September 1400 he obtained a licence from Bishop Stafford of Exeter to have his own oratory in the manor-house. Two months later he executed an entail of his lands in Bokelly and in the parish of Egloshayle, arranging that if he and his wife died childless the estate should pass to his brother, John Jop. It may have been a family connexion that brought Nicholas to the attention of the burgesses of Bodmin, for his brother, a merchant, resided in the town and on one occasion (in 1406) had provided mainprise for the parliamentary burgesses-elect.2

Although Bokelly served on four royal commissions, all but one of them concerned with the payment of large ransoms demanded for the release of certain Englishmen imprisoned in Brittany, he never held a more permanent royal office. He does seem, however, to have occupied a post within the administration of the estates of Plympton priory, Devon, for in 1406-7 payments from the manor of Lanowseynt (Cornwall), were transferred by him to the steward of the priory. In 1417 Bokelly, then described as ‘literate’, stood proxy for his kinsman, Thomas Jop, at his institution by the bishop as rector of Plymtree. By then he had attended the shire elections held in Cornwall for the Parliaments of 1411 and March 1416 (the latter being the occasion of his own return as a parliamentary burgess), and had made some powerful friends, one of whom, (Sir) John Arundell I* of Lanherne, acted as a feoffee of his property and, in 1425, defended his right to the same at the assizes. Although Bokelly did not himself appear in court on that occasion, it seems likely that he was still alive, for according to arrangements made by him the enfeoffment was to last only until his death.3 Among Arundell’s co-feoffees was another Nicholas Jop or Bokelly and it was probably he rather than his elder namesake who was recorded in the 1428 assessments as liable to pay tax as tenant of land at Lamellin and Colquite.4

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

  • 1. According to Vivian (Vis. Cornw. 100), but in the lawsuit of 1425 Alice Bokelly was said to have died childless: JUST 1/1540 mm. 76d, 111d, 112d.
  • 2. Add. Roll 64389; Reg. Stafford ed. Hingeston-Randolph, 271; Cornw. Feet of Fines (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 833, 835; E122/113/3; C219/10/3.
  • 3. J. Maclean, Trigg Minor, ii. 88; Reg. Stafford, 195; JUST 1/1540 mm. 76d, 111d, 112d; C219/10/6, 11/8.
  • 4. Feudal Aids, i. 230, 231. The younger of them became a yeoman of the Crown and sat for Bodmin in 1449 (Feb.) and for Lostwithiel in 1453.