1353-02-12, Westminster

Commission to Robert de Thorpe and Henry Grene to make inquisition 1n the county of Suffolk touching a grievous complaint by merchants of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Berwick on Tweed that, whereas some ships laden at Lescluse in Flanders with their goods and merchandise, while on the voyage to the said towns were driven ashore between Oldekirkelay and Laystoft, and elsewhere in the county of Suffolk, and broken, the goods and merchandise therein cast up on land and the men of the same ships for the most part escaped alive, as has been testified by letters patent under the seals of the commonalties of the said towns of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Berwick shewn before the king and council, Edmund de Eingrave, chivaler, Edmund de Thorp and others rushing upon many of the said men as they came to land, under the pretence that they were Scots and enemies of the king, killed some of them in the sea as they were swimming to land on pieces of wood and some on the sea shore, wounded some and left them for dead on the sand, and claiming the goods and merchandise as wreck as though no one had escaped alive out of the ships carried away the same; then seeing that they could not justify their deed in this behalf, they sold the goods and merchandise to Mary late the wife of Thomas, late earl of Norfolk and marshal of England, to exclude the merchants from recovery of the same, and procured her to obtain, by a suggestion in the chancery that some of those parts had carried away her goods at Leystoft, Pakfeld, Kirkele and Cressynglond, a commission of oyer and terminer, and so Edmund, Edmund and their accomplices are striving to usurp the goods and merchandise, and to hinder the merchants in the recovery of their own and to have them outlawed by processes to be made by such commission, for which the complainants have prayed the king for a remedy ; and to certify him of the whole truth of the matter. 10.