BUNTING, John

A spicer, Bunting probably resided in the Oxford parish of St. Peter le Bailey, where he held a tenement of Osney abbey, although he appears also to have had a connexion with Thame.4 Ibid. iii (Oxf. Historical Soc. xci), 263; CP40/757, rot. 28. At the beginning of 1450 the abbot of Thame was suing him and John Credy, a carpenter from that parish, for debt in the court of common pleas, and a Richard Bunting was buried at Tetsworth, near Thame, in 1452: CP40/757, rot. 28. In all likelihood, his mother was the widowed Elizabeth Bunting who granted a rent of 10s. p.a. from her tenement in St. Peter le Bailey to the abbey in June 1443, since her son (who quitclaimed the rent to the monks in December 1449) was named John Bunting.5 Cart. Oseney Abbey, iii. 93-94, 263; Registrum Cancellarii Oxoniensis, i (Oxf. Historical Soc. xciii), 175-6, 294. A John Bunting of Witney began a suit against a neighbour in the early 1420s for breaking into his property there, but it is impossible to establish whether this was the MP, whose name, in any case, was not uncommon: CP40/649, rot. 354d. In spite of representing Oxford in Parliament, Bunting never played a major role in the administration of the borough. His only known term as bailiff was nevertheless an eventful one, since it coincided with the discovery of lollard conspiracies in London, Oxford and several other towns, and he helped in May 1431 to apprehend William Perkins, the self-styled ‘Jack Sharp’ who had fled to Oxford after leading an abortive rising in Abingdon.6 J.A.F. Thomson, Later Lollards, 58-59; PPC, iv. 107-8. According to the 17th

Just under three years later, Robert Walford* sued Bunting for debt in the mayor’s court at Oxford. Walford claimed that the abbot of the nearby Benedictine house at Eynsham had given him a tally for £3 3s. 2d., and that Bunting owed him part of this sum (43s. 2d.) in his capacity as the abbot’s surety. Citing local custom, Bunting responded by asserting that Walford should have taken action against him before the bailiffs of Oxford rather than the mayor’s court, a point which was referred to a future hearing, but the outcome of this suit is not known.7 Bodl. Top. Oxon. c. 440, f. 169. Bunting appeared in a court held by the chancellor of Oxford university in January 1449, to acknowledge that he owed just over £5 to John Beke of London, probably in connexion with a business transaction.8 Registrum Cancellarii Oxoniensis, i. 175-6. He also had dealings with John Weston of Beckley, a village just a few miles north-east of Oxford, to whom he owed a small sum of money in the spring of 1451.9 Ibid. 233. Later that decade, Bunting and the Londoners Peter Aysheforthe and Thomas Gollan were joint creditors of two other Oxford men, and in November 1458 they assigned the money they were owed (apparently well over £6) to Mark Thomas, a scholar of the university, to receive in alms.10 Registrum Cancellarii Oxoniensis, ii. (Oxford Historical Soc. xciv), 7. Bunting was still alive in the summer of the following year but he disappears from view thereafter.11 Cart. Oseney Abbey, ii. 94. A John Bunting was arrested and imprisoned while on pilgrimage in Norf. in the late 1450s or first half of the 1460s. Appealing to the chancellor for his release, he declared that he was a stranger to that county, but it is impossible to tell whether he was the Oxford man: C1/27/354.