This is an additional note to the Gloucestershire connection to the London
Carpenters. We had seen that John Carpenter Sr. and his brother Robert held
land of Thomas Duke of Gloucester in the troubled reign of King Richard II.
Richard Whittington the Mayor of London and patron-friend of John Carpenter
Town Clerk of London was from a gentry family in Gloucester. Whittington was
asked to accompany King Richard to arrest the Duke. This had troubled me
until I reread Whittingtons biography in the Dictionary of National
Biography, where it quotes sources at this historical juncture of
Whittington referring to both the King and the Duke as his special lords
and promoters. Thus we might suppose a deeper web of interests and
connections between the London Carpenters and the local situation in
Gloucestershire. In my research of the London Carpenters these local
interrelationships have been the most difficult to shed light on. They no
doubt existed in both Warwickshire as well as Gloucestershire. Previous we
had seen a document that listed Richard Carpenter with a large group of
cloth-makers and dyers in Gloucestershire in political difficulties at this
same time. Whittington was likewise a cloth-maker and dealer. My conclusion
in all of this is that, the Carpenters and Whittingtons, were manufacturing
cloth in Gloucestershire on land held of the Duke in the late 1300s.
Bruce Carpenter