into Fawkham church and stolen goods deposited there, a
Horton Kirby labourer charged with breaking into the house of Thomas
Scudder at Horton and stealing his barley and oats and Nicholas Waterman
of Sole Street in Cobham, labourer, who was said to have assembled at Sole
Street with unknown felons and traitors in warlike array, proclaiming that
Cade was still alive and that the kingdom of England belonged to him of
right. The law has a long memory and it could be that John Goulde, late of
‘Aysshe by Wrothan’, labourer, whom the King pardoned in 1461 for ‘all
felonies, trespasses, offences and consequent outlawries’, had been a
fellow traveller with the rebel of Sole Street.34
Another and more eminent Ash parishioner in trouble at much
the same time, but on a different score, was John Idley, or Idelegh, who
was variously described as of ‘Assh by Dertford’, gentleman, as of ‘Idley,
co. |
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Kent’, esquire, as ‘late of Aysshe by Mepeham’,
esquire and as of ‘Esture, co. Kent’, gentleman.
Idley was for years on the run from his creditors. In 1465,
it was recorded that he had failed to appear before justices of the bench
of the late King (Henry VI) to answer John Fereby, or Feerby, the elder of
St Paul’s Cray, touching a debt of forty pounds, to answer Roger Mell
and Walter Moyle touching debts of twenty pounds and to answer a plea of
the executors of the will of John Aston, late parson of the church of
Snodland, that he render then five marks; also, that he had failed to
appear before the justices of the present King (Edward IV) to answer
Walter Moyle concerning a trespass.35
One of those who had suffered from Idley’s shortcomings,
John Fereby, or Feerby, was of the |