DRAYTON, William

Drayton came from an old-established Bath family.3 The MP must be distinguished from several namesakes active in various parts of England at the same period, including the Glos. esquire and two London merchants. A namesake and probable ancestor had served as mayor of the city several times in the reign of Edward II, and another putative kinsman, John Drayton, was bailiff of Bath in 1416.4 Bath Ancient Deeds, BC151/3/77, 5/19, 92. William’s relationship to John, who was still alive in 1438, has not been established with any certainty. They may have been father and son, but in 1395 John, his wife Margery and their daughter Joan were grantees in survivorship of property in Broad Street, Bath: BC151/3/26, 5/17. William’s own career was essentially a local one. He is first heard of in 1438 when he was among the witnesses to the conveyance by Walter Rich* to the community of Bath of a plot of land outside the west gate previously disputed with the hospital of St. John the Baptist.5 Bath Ancient Deeds, BC151/3/26. He maintained close ties with Rich, who appointed him one of the feoffees of his city property, but he also regularly attested the deeds of other local men.6 Ibid. BC151/1/49-51, 5/87; Som. Archs., Walker-Heneage mss, DD\Whb/259; Reg. Bekynton, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 537.

As far as the incomplete list of Bath’s civic officials allows us to tell, Drayton’s career of local office-holding remained limited. He served as constable in 1442-3, and nearly a decade later, in the summer of 1451, was chosen mayor by his fellow citizens. In the interim he had also received a royal appointment to collect a tax granted by the Commons in 1446. The circumstances of Drayton’s election to the Parliament of 1460 are obscure. To this assembly, summoned in the immediate aftermath of the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton and widely expected to impose a constitutional settlement, the citizens of Bath returned two men of apparently no prior experience of parliamentary affairs.7 The evidence is inconclusive, as the Bath returns to the Parls. of 1445 and 1459 are lost. It is not clear whether Drayton rode to Parliament, and if so, for how long he participated in the Commons’ proceedings: if he survived the two sessions in their entirety, he died not long after, and was certainly dead by the first days of March 1461.8 Bath Ancient Deeds, BC151/1/51.