Only part of this testamentary case survives, leaving the precise matter at issue (and indeed even the question of who was plaintiff and who was defendant) unclear. Luckily, the will in question survives (TNA, PROB 11/8/388) and it throws light on what the dispute might have been. John Baker Sr.’s testament was written on 13 Apr. 1490 and probated on 6 Aug. 1490. Baker was a citizen cooper living in the parish of St. Michael Bassishaw at the time of his death. His will indicates that he had no living children: thus though at first we might leap to the conclusion that the party to the suit was his son, that was in fact not the case. Baker Sr. named as one of his beneficiaries a cousin named John Baker who had not yet reached the age of 21 years – it was he who was the party to this suit. When the testator died, this younger John Baker, along with a girl named Elizabeth Pap alias Baker, also a minor, were living with John Sr. and Agnes (who had apparently subsequently married someone named Symson); Baker Sr. committed them to Agnes’s “guiding” until they were of age. Baker Sr. bequeathed to both children gifts of money and plate, which they were to receive on reaching the age of twenty-one; John’s monetary bequest was £6 13s 4d, supplemented by standing cups, masers, silver spoons, and other precious household objects. In addition John Jr. was bequeathed two messuages in East Greenwich, perhaps the property to which Agnes Waren refers below. John Baker Sr’s wife Agnes, named as executrix, was to inherit the residue of his goods and his other properties in St Michael Bassishaw parish in London and in East Greenwich; if she died, then the cousin John Baker would be the heir.
The partial testimony in this case is confusing. Most testamentary cases concerned the failure of an executor or executrix to hand over a bequest: so it is possible that Agnes Baker Symson had failed to hand over the bequests John Baker Sr. had left for his young cousin, John Baker Jr., when he came of age. But Agnes Waren’s testimony suggests that the younger John Baker had been born only nine years before, in about 1484, so that would mean that he was years away from the age of twenty-one when the inheritance was to be disbursed. Thus it seems that something else was motivating this suit. The key may be an otherwise inexplicable statement in Agnes Waren’s deposition. She refers to John Baker the younger not only as having been born nine years before in Whitechapel but also that he had died three days after his baptism.
So my hypothesis is that it was Agnes Symson who was the plaintiff and John Baker the defendant. Normally an executrix would not have a case to bring against a beneficiary, so this takes some ingenuity to explain: but bear with me while I make an argument for a rather strange theory. I think the object of Agnes Symson’s suit was to nullify the bequests to the young boy because she alleged that he was not, in fact, a relative of the testator. Waren’s enigmatic testimony about John Baker Jr’s birth suggests that the plaintiff Agnes Symson was contending in her own submissions (which, as usual, don’t survive) that the younger John Baker was an imposter rather than John Sr’s cousin, that he was switched by his mother soon after birth when her own baby died and then placed in the household of her wealthy relative John Baker Sr. By the evidence of his testament, John Baker Sr. certainly thought that the boy living in his house was his cousin and it was under that belief that he left to him a substantial bequest. But perhaps the younger John was an imposter – or perhaps Agnes Baker Symson seized upon the idea of portraying him as such in order to avoid paying out the bequests a decade or more in the future, or even to justify refusing to keep him in her house (as her late husband had enjoined her to do in his will). Such a scenario, though admittedly fanciful, gains some traction because imposters were in the air in the early 1490s: word of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, two young men claiming to be Yorkist princes in the early years of Henry VII’s reign, would have been circulating at exactly this time.
LMA, MS DL/C/A/001/MS09065, fols. 136r-137r
Testimony of Agnes Smyth,1 Witness for Agnes Symson [as either defendant or plaintiff], Jan.-Feb. 14932
On behalf of Agnes Symson
Agnes Smyth of the parish of St. Bartholomew the Less of the City of London, where she has lived for seven years, illiterate, of free condition, twenty-six years old, as she says. Sworn as a witness etc., she says that she has known Agnes Symson for nine or ten years, and John Baker, deceased, for nine years. To the first part of the submission, she says that its contents are true, and this she knows because this witness was present on a certain day falling between the feasts of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist [24 June] and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary [15 Aug.] two years ago, together with Thomas Lydys[3] and others, where and when this witness heard the reading of the testament in a chamber within the house of the said John. She heard that John Baker bequeathed to John Baker the younger certain goods specified in his testament. And she says that the testament was probated before the Reverend father the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the administration of goods of the said John and other matters from his testament were committed to the said Agnes. To the second part, she says its contents are true. To the third part, she says that what she said above is true, and concerning fame she knows nothing to depose. She agrees with the second witness examined above,[4] except that she says that it was about eight years and more.
Testimony of Alice Waren, Witness for Agnes Symson [as either defendant or plaintiff], Jan.-Feb. 1493
Alice Waren of the parish of St. Margaret Westminster, where she has lived for seven years, illiterate, of free condition, fifty years old, as she says. Sworn as a witness, etc., she says that she has known Agnes Symson alias Baker for nine years, John Baker, deceased, for fourteen years. To the first part, she says the said John Baker made his testament and committed the administration of his goods to the said Agnes, and that she heard that the said John Baker bequeathed to John Baker the younger certain lands to the value of forty shillings a year, as Agnes, the mother of John Baker,[5] told her. John the younger was born around the feast of St. Michael [29 Sept.] nine years ago in this witness’s house in Whitechapel parish outside Aldgate,[6] of the city of London, and he was baptised in the said church, and on the third day, in the middle of the night, the said John Baker[7] died, and was buried in the cemetery of the same church, which this witness testifies from her own sight and hearing, and otherwise she has nothing to depose concerning its contents. To the second part, she says that she knows nothing to depose concerning its contents. To the third part, she says that what she said above is true and that public voice and fame circulated and circulates concerning these things in the City of London and other places.
[1] Agnes Smyth was named in Baker’s will as the wife of William Smyth, salter; she received a bequest of 20s. Her description of the timing of the reading of Baker’s will – between mid-June and mid-August 1490 – conforms with the dates of composition and probate in the original will.
[2] Another copy of this same deposition, but stopping mid-sentence in the middle of the folio, appears on fol. 137r.
[3] Thomas Ledys, citizen and pouchmaker, was named in Baker’s will as one of the executors, with a bequest of 53s 4d for his trouble.
[4] No previous depositions from this case survive, unfortunately.
[5] Confusing things still further, this is presumably a different Agnes Baker, mother of the younger John, rather than Agnes Baker alias Symson.
[6] St Mary Matfelon parish. This phrase – from “in Whitchapel parish” to “Aldgate”, is inserted interlineally, above a deleted “in Totilstrete situated within the Westminster precinct” (the latter perhaps her current address rather than where she lived nine years before).
[7] See conspiracy theory above in the introductory text.
Consistory 