Nicholas Greenhaugh

Nicholas Greenhaugh was the estate manager for John Hopton, the Suffolk landowner whose son was mentioned in the last post. One of his (presumably many) account books for the 1450s survives in the Suffolk Record Office. It is a prosaic document for the main part, but towards the end there is, among the incomings and outgoings, a sketchy self-portrait by Greenhaugh. 

The writing just to the right of the man reads: "Nov[er]int univ[er]si p[er] p[re]sentes me" - "Everyone will know me by this". This is not just evidence pointing towards the idea that Greenhaugh was indeed sketching himself; it is also an interesting pun. The same Latin phrase was an extremely common, highly formulaic tag used at the beginning of property charters - documents with which Greenhaugh would have certainly been familiar. 

William Hopton, book owner

This tidbit is from fifteenth-century Harwich (Essex), which then a locally important port town; it is taken from the court held Thursday after the feast of St. Barnabus, 1478.

Et quod Ric[ard]us Curteys de Sandwich in com[itatu] kant[ij] mariner et Tho[ma]s Lytell de Gippewico in com[itatu] suff[olci] yoman xo die mens[is] marcij a[nn]o r[egni] r[egis] E[dwardi] iiijo xviijo vi et armis ij libr[os] quorum I voc Bertil mew de p[ro]prietatibus rerum et aliter de le sege de Troye ad valenc[iam] x libr[is] de bonis et catall’ Will[elm]i Hopton armig[er]i apud herwich felonite[r] ceper[unt] etc Et postea eodem die et anno ibidem wannaver[unt] Qui quidem libri seisit[i] fuerunt et capt[i] ad usum domini etc Et postea devener[unt] ad manus dicti Will[elm]i per deliberacionem Balli[vorum] etc.

And Richard Curteys of Sandwich in the county of Kent, mariner, and Thomas Lytell of Ipswich in the county of Suffolk, yeoman, the 10th day of March, the 18th year of the reign of King Edward IV, by force and arms feloniously took two books from the goods and chattels of William Hopton, knight, at Harwich: one called 'Bartholomew, On the Properties of Things', and another about the siege of Troye, to the value of £10. And afterwards the same day and year waived them. The which books were seized and captured to the use of the lord etc. And afterwards they fell to the hands of the said William by the deliberation of the bailiffs.

This is interesting because William Hopton was the son of John Hopton, about whom Colin Richmond wrote an excellent book; Hopton owned large estates in and around Walberswick on the Suffolk coast, itself a port town of moderate size, like Harwich. Richmond's careful archival excavations showed John Hopton to be a man of modest tastes and unextravagant lifestyle - it is thus entirely fitting that his son seems to have owned two of the most popular books of the late Middle Ages. (It must be presumed that the siege of Troy was that by Lidgate, but of course it is impossible to be certain.)