Rethinking Roger Carpenter. Roger Carpenter was the only Carpenter in 1330s
and 1340s with wealth and importance in the city of London. The merchants of
the period are referred to as the Barons of London. Would it be reasonable
in any way to exclude the possibility that Richard Carpenter could be his
son? There is no will extant for Roger. However there is extant
documentation for his infant son Thomas in 1349. If Richard was born c.
1330, he would already have been a young man about business by 1349, but
still too young to care for Thomas. The legal representative of Thomas is
his Aunt Agnes. It is an interesting fact, in the extant documentation for
Thomas Carpenter, which he is entrusted to a mercer, and that one of the two
sureties, of the document was a mercer. We know that John Carpenter the
Town Clerk of London was a mercer, and his father Richard was buried in the
neighborhood (St. Martin Outwich) associated with the mercers, and he
appears in documents with other cloth merchants. (Calendar of Letter-Books,
Letter-book F, p. 200.)
Wednesday before the Nativity of the Lord [25 Dec.] 23 Edward III [a.d.
1349], the guardianship of Thomas, son of Roger le Carpenter, spycer,
committed to Thomas de Brandone, mercer, by Walter Turk, Mayor, Richard
Lacer, Roger de Depham, Aldermen, and Thomas de Waldene, the Chamberlain, by
assent of William de Chalk and Agnes his wife, the aunt and nearest friend
of the said Thomas, together with the sum of L.45, and rents of the value
of 105s 9 1/2d., to hold in trust for the said infant, who is not to marry
without the permission of the Mayor and Aldermen. Sureties, viz., Richard
Vyncent, Rector of the Church of St. Benedict de Shorhogge, who holds a lay
fee in the parish of St. Augustine, near St. Pauls gate, and Adam
Fraunceys, mercer.
The language describing Agnes as the nearest friend of Thomas must mean
his nearest relative of legal age or station in life bestowing
responsibility. If Richard were a brother he would have been disqualified
of any legal responsibility because of age. The other point, which makes me
suspicious Thomas had other siblings, is the amount of his inheritance,
which is seemingly small for the only son of one of the wealthiest merchants
in London. The amount of 40 pounds appears in many similar documents of the
time. The amount might have been what it legally took to insure the
temporary well being of a minor. Likewise for the father of Roger Carpenter,
there is no other logical candidate except the
William Carpenter spycer in the early 1300s. William exhibits all the same
trade and political activity characteristics of the later Roger. There were
no other Carpenters of similar social standing in London at the time.
Williams son must have been
Roger. Roger must have been the father of the Richard who appeared in
several property litigations in the surrounding London area in the late
1300s.
Roger had various properties and connections to the St. Benedict parish in
Shorhog, an area close by Fleetstreet and St. Clement Danes, where all the
other Carpenters (and a Richard Carpenter) resided in the late 1200s and the
1300s. Shorhog and Holebourn seem overlapping. Thus we can assume the
William Charpenter de Holebourne was the father of Roger. Both were spycers
. William de Holebourne and Edward Charpenter of St. Clement Danes must be
related. Edward and a William appear together in a ship salvage related
document on the coast of Dorcet. The surnames of both are rendered by the
telltale Charpenter, indicating denizen status. Edwards son was a
documented wine importer and wool exporter. Well known spycers were
importers of wine in addition to their nominal profession.
The cloth making and retailing professions in England, according to my
reading, only come into their own in the mid
1300s, when English home-manufactured cloth begins to dominate the markets
of Europe. That Richard and his sons would begin to move into these
professions would have been only natural. From the mid 1300s on England
really begins its history as a manufacturing nation and English cloth was
the starting place.
Bruce Carpenter