SWENGE, William

The mercer William Swenge is not known to have played any part in public life prior to his election to the Parliament of 1429, and it is tempting to speculate whether the business to be transacted motivated him to seek election. There were a number of petitions concerned with trade, and the burden of the first parliamentary grant of a fifteenth and tenth of Henry VI’s reign would also have been borne by the mercantile community. Undoubtedly, Swenge commanded some respect among his neighbours, for just a week after the Lords and Commons assembled on 22 Sept., he was chosen portreeve of Taunton, an office which he would occupy on two subsequent occasions in 1434-5 and 1441-2. During the 1430s Swenge also invariably formed part of the delegation of the townsmen dispatched to the shire court to report the result of Taunton’s parliamentary elections.2 C219/14/2, 3, 5; 15/1. While he thus played his part in local political life he only once in his career secured an appointment under the Crown, being named among the tax collectors for the county of Somerset in 1442.

The exact extent of Swenge’s property cannot be established, but it included three messuages, two tofts, seven and a half acres of land and two acres of meadow in Taunton and ‘Galmeton’ which he acquired from William atte Wode and his wife by 1427.3 Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 67. In 1449 he inhabited a house in the High Street of Taunton which had formerly belonged to the Taunton-born London notary Thomas Mayvell and his parents.4 CCR, 1447-54, p. 157. Few other details of Swenge’s career have come to light. He was periodically called upon to attest his neighbours’ property transactions, and in 1436 was among the feoffees of the premises formerly belonging to Thomas Osborne.5 E326/5038, 5044, 5053, 5055; Som. Archs., Portman mss, DD\PM/5/2/8. In 1450 he was in dispute with the Weymouth merchant Martin Valance and two Somerset husbandmen over respective debts of £7 and £8, probably arising from his commercial activities.6 CP40/756, rot. 151d. The date of Swenge’s death has not been discovered, but he was still alive in August 1452, when he is last found witnessing a Taunton property deed.7 E326/5055.