JOHN CARPENTER (ca 1370-ca 1441) town clerk of London, son of Richard
Carpenter, a citizen of London, and Christina, his wife, was probably born
about 1370, and educated for the profession of law.
On 20 April 1417 he was chosen town clerk or common clerk of the city,
after having held an inferior post in the town clerk's office for some
years previously. Carpenter was well acquainted with John Marchaunt, his
predecessor, and was one of the executors of Marchaunt's will in 1421.
As town clerk Carpenter frequently addressed letters to Henry V on behalf
of the corporation, and very soon after his appointment began a compilation
of the laws, customs, privileges, and usages of the city, extracted from
the archives of the corporation. This important work, which was entitled
the "Liber Albus," was completed in November, 1419, and was printed from
the Guildhall manuscript for the first time in the Rolls Series in 1859.
Carpenter was the intimate friend of the far-famed Sir Richard Whittington,
who was lord mayor for the third time in 1419, and as one of the executors
of Whittington's will was busily employed in 1423 and the following years
in carrying out Whittington's charitable bequests.
On 23 Feb. 1431 Carpenter and his wife, whose Christian name was Katharine,
received from the corporation an eighty years' lease of property in St.
Peter, Cornhill, at a nominal rental; on 20 Nov. 1436 he was elected one of
the representatives of the city in Parliament; on 14 Dec. following he was
granted a patent of exemption from all summonses to serve on juries or to
perform other petty municipal duties.
In 1438 Carpenter resigned the town clerkship; during his twenty-one years
of office he was sometimes styled 'secretary,' a designation which no other
town clerk is known to have borne.
On 26 Sept. 1439 Carpenter was re-elected member of Parliament for the
city; but he had now resolved to retire from public life.
On 3 Dec. following he obtained from Henry VI letters patent exempting him
from all military and civil duties. He was thus relieved of the necessity
of attending Parliament and of receiving the honour of knighthood.
On 10 June 1440 the mayor and aldermen voted Carpenter a gratuity of twenty
marks, and in 1441 he defended the sheriffs in a lawsuit preferred against
them by the dean of the collegiate church of St. Martin-le-Grand.
In the same year Carpenter, cojointly with another John Carpenter,
afterwards bishop of Worcester, and John Somerset, chronicler of the
exchequer, received from the crown a grant of the manor of Theobalds in
Cheshunt, Hertfordshire.
He probably died in 1441. On 8 March of that year Carpenter drew up a will
disposing of his personal property, and a copy of this document is still
extant. From it we learn that Carpenter lived in the parish of St. Peter,
Cornhill, in whose church he desired to be buried.
He left large sums of money, together with his jewels and household
furniture, to his wife, and similar gifts to his brothers, Robert and John,
and their children.
To the religious foundations in and near London he also bequeathed gifts of
money, and the terms of his bequest indicate that he was a lay brother of
the convent of the Charterhouse, London, and of the fraternity of the sixty
priests of London.
To his friends Reginald Pecock, William Clewe, John Carpenter, bishop of
Worcester and other ecclesiastics, he left most of his books, which
included Richard de Bury's 'Philobiblon' and some of Aristotle's works
translated into Latin.
Of his landed property no account is extant, and no mention is made of it
in the will that now survives. But he undoubtedly owned large estates in
the city, and made a careful disposition of them.
Stow states in his 'Survey of London,' p. 110, that Carpenter 'gave
tenements to the citye for the finding and bringing up of foure poor men's
children with meat, drink, apparell, learning at the schooles in the
universities, &c., until they be professed, and then others in their places
for ever.'
This benefaction was duly executed by the corporation with little change
for nearly four centuries. In the earliest extant book of the city
accounts, dated 1633, a list of Carpenter's lands and tenements appointed
for educational purposes is given, and the rental of the property then
amounted to 49L. 13s. 4d., and the charges upon it to no more than 20L.
13s. 4d.
In the course of the following century the discrepancy between the two
sides of the account increased rapidly. In 1823 the charity commissioners
pointed out that only a fraction of the proceeds of the benefaction was
applied according to the testator's wishes; in 1827 the court of common
council increased the sum to be applied to the education and maintenance of
four poor boys, and in 1833 it was resolved to apply 900L. per annum from
the Carpenter bequest to the foundation and endowment of a new school and
to the establishment of eight Carpenter scholarships for the assistance of
pupils at the school and universities.
This school, called the City of London School, was erected on the site of
Honey Lane Market, and opened in 1837; it was removed in 1883 to the Thames
Embankment. A statue of Carpenter as the virtual founder was placed on
the principal staircase in the old building, and has been removed to the
new. Orations in Carpenter's honour are given by the boys on the annual
speechdays.
[Thomas Brewer's Memoir of the Life and Times of John Carpenter (London,
1856) gives very full particulars. Carpenter's Liber Albus, edited by H. T.
Riley (1859), forms the first volume of the Munimenta Gildhallae
Londoniensis in the Rolls Series. Translations of the Norman French
passages are given in the third volume of the Munimenta, together with a
long letter by Carpenter (dated 20 Feb. 1432, and printed form Guildhall
Letterbook K), describing Henry VI's entry into the city of London after
his return form France.]