John Fresshe

National Archives document SC 8/19/915C: In 1385, King Richard II issued this summons to the sheriffs of London, Nicholas Exton and John Fresshe, requesting them to find, apprehend and to bring Edmund Fraunceys and his wife Idonia before the King's council on a charge of attempting to defraud University College, Oxford. Detail of the writ illustrating Exton's and Fresshe's names, respectively, in a contemporary scribal hand.

John Fresshe (sometimes Frossh,^[1] Fresche, Froysh or Frosh) (died 6 September 1397)^[2] was a citizen, alderman, and Mayor of London in the latter years of the fourteenth century. A merchant by trade, he was a member of the Mercers' Company, a medieval London trade guild,^[3] and has been described as one of London's "leading citizens at the end of the century".^[4]

His early life is unknown to historians, and he only appears in the records with his marriage to Juliana, the daughter of an influential merchant in 1373. From then on, promotion within the city of London's political machinery was swift. He soon became an alderman, or councillor, and undertook service to both the city and the King, Richard II. He encountered personal and political difficulties in 1381 after the Peasants' Revolt. In the early 1380s, he and his colleagues in other victualling trade guild clashed with a reformist tendency within the Common council led by John Northampton. In revenge, the reformer accused Fresshe of treasonously assisting the rebels, and he was imprisoned for a short time. Fresshe's party was soon able to take power on the council, and Fresshe was restored to favour.

With this exception, Fresshe appears to have avoided too many political pitfalls. He concentrated on his mercantile interests, making himself a lot of money in the process and, by acting as a broker for his colleagues, them as well. The one interruption to this peaceful existence came in 1392, when the King, dissatisfied with the common council's running of London affairs, had all the city's officials arrested for a short period and suspended the city's rights to appoint its mayor and council. This crisis does not seem to have interrupted Fresshe for long; he and his colleagues were soon released, and, indeed, in 1394 Fresshe was himself elected mayor. He died in 1397 and was buried in the St Benet Sherehog church, which had been receiving his patronage for some years. His wife survived him, and their three daughters made good marriages into the families of Fresshe's fellow merchants.