A 1464 Patent Rolls document sheds new light on John Carpenter, Town Clerk
of London. We can see that by 1464 he was deceased and that 1464 connected
him to the mercer trade, at least during his years in London.
..and all other lands thereto annexed, and all lands, rents and services
in the parishes of St. Mary Wolnoth and St. Michael upon Cornhull London,
sometime of Michael de la Pole earl of Suffolk, which the grantor had
jointly with William Estfeld, John Fray then chief baron of the exchequer,
Henry Frowyk, William Milreth, John Olney late citizens and aldermen of
London, Hugh Dyke, John Carpenter the younger, Richard Ryche citizens and
mercers, Thomas Walsyngham, John Wilton, Rodger Birkes, Thomas Dukmaton and
John Kirkeby chaplain, all now deceased, by demise and feoffment of William
Phelip, Thomas Tudenham (Todenham),knights, John Hampden and Thomas Haseley;
Ralph Josselyn being mayor of London, John Tate and John Stone sheriffs.
Witnesses: Thomas Cooke, Matthew Philip, Richard Lee, Hugh Wythe, Thomas
Wenslowe. Dated London, 21 November 4 Edward IV.
May of the names read like a whos-who of London finance and politics of the
time. Henry Frowyk appears in other documents with John Carpenter. Henry was
once mayor of London and himself a prominent mercer. Thomas Cookes father
Robert Cooke was associated with the Carpenter brothers during their draper
days in Lavenham. The mercer connection here does much to explain Town Clerk
Johns tenure as Town Clerk under Whittingtons tenure as mayor of London.
Whittington was a mercer. Carpenters role in the formal mercer organization
is well explained in vol. I of William Herberts THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVE
GREAT LIVERY COMPANIES OF LONDON, pp. 226-7. Carpenter was a warden of the
organization with a John Coventry and William Grove. These three figures
together gained formal recognition of the mercers as a guild by the king,
Henry VI. John Carpenter was in a sense a charter member of the mercers
organization and their rise to prominence in London finance and politics.
Herbert also alludes to a existing portrait of John Carpenter, still in
existence by the 1800s. The mercers were largely retailers of wool cloth by
about 1400. From that point on they also sold silks and velvets. Previous
identifications of all three Carpenter brothers, and father Richard, with
the wool cloth manufacturing business (draper trade), are by no means a
contradiction. Multiple business connections in the period were extremely
common. The Carpenters seem to have made wool cloth outside of London, and
then retailed it within the city. It is not difficult to imagine them
selling their own cloth, or even the cloth made from wool of their own
sheep. Town Clerk John and his family members were entrepreneurs of the
highest order. All of the above will begin to illuminate kindred groups and
their activities outside the city into the late 1400s. One such group I have
already discovered in Reading Berkshire.
Bruce E. Carpenter