John Carpenter town clerk of London

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John Carpenter (1370?-1441?), town clerk of London was perhaps only partially understood by his 19th century biographer Thomas Brewer in his Memoir of the Life and Times of John Carpenter. Brewer, due to a lack of available historical documentation, did not appreciate Carpenter's connections to London merchant history. From John Carpenter's and his wife Katherine's own wills we know the crucial facts that his father was a Richard and his mother was a Christina. Carpenter's own wife Katherine was from Zeeland, which suggests much about John Carpenter himself. Carpenter's father Richard would seem the Richard mentioned in the will of Roger Carpenter, pepperer, as a relative. Richard is described as still underage and under the guardianship of a John Beek (Bek) at Roger's death in 1348/9. What is important here was that Roger came from a longer lineage of prosperous pepperer and spice merchants in London, with frequent references to them in the celebrated Calendar of London Letter Books. In the 1200s surnamed Carpenter merchants were active in the wine trade from Bordeaux to London and seemingly in the wool export business. Roger Carpenter himself was one of the founders of the Worshipful Company of Grocers. John Carpenter's own personal interests and interests are perhaps best revealed in his relationship with Henry Barton who was mayor of London the year previous to Carpenter's appointment as town clerk. Barton was a prosperous wool merchant and he and Carpenter possessed joint interests in various land holdings (Close Rolls, June 12, 1434).Other Close Roll documents from the late 1300s portray an elder and younger John Carpenter, as well as a Robert Carpenter, as inhabitants of the important cloth town of Lavenham. The two John Carpenters are described as drapers. The town clerk had both an older brother John and a younger brother Robert. The town clerk John Carpenter choose for his own church and resting place at death the church of St. Peters in Cornhill, the official church of the Worshipful Company of Drapers. The period of the Lavenham Carpenters coincides with civil unrest within London and particularly in London merchant circles. Events and other individuals in these documents have definite London connections. It may be that two of the three sons of Richard Carpenter of London were of the draper trade. In London Assize of Nuisance documents for 1412 and 1416 a John Carpenter can be seen as acting as an attorney. It has always been assumed that Carpenter attended the Inns of Court in London and received some manner of legal education. Celebrated in history are Carpenter's ties to the mercer, brewer and London mayor Richard Whittington. Carpenter was partly instrumental with Whittington in the formal organization of the Worshipful Company of Mercers. Many have argued that this was ceremonial. It is of course not to be forgotten that mercers themselves were cloth merchants. Carpenter the town clerk was certainly a relative and close confidant of John Carpenter the bishop of Worcester (d. 1476) and with him was perhaps loyal to the Plantagenet house of Lancaster. Scholars of the period merchant culture have always seen the principle players of the times as multi-faceted individuals with diverse economic interests and activities. John Carpenter does not disappoint this analysis. By the end of his life John Carpenter was a significant land holder and possessor of wealth. Some of his personal land holdings at death within the city of London eventually translated themselves into the formation and funding of the City of London School.

[edit] BOOKS

Thomas Brewer, Memoir of the Life and Times of John Carpenter, Arthur Taylor, London, 1856.

A.E. Douglas-Smith, The City of London School, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1965.

[edit] ARTICLES

Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1959-60, vol. 3, pp. 1064-5.

Bruce E. Carpenter, 'Addendum to Brewer's Memoir of the Town Clerk of London,' published in the Journal of Tezukayama University, Nara, Japan, no. 4, 2000, pp. 57-115.