UNDERWOOD, William

Although a draper like his father, Underwood is likely to have dealt in other commodities besides cloth. In 1440, for example, he was engaged in a lawsuit at Westminster against a husbandman from Bedford to whom he claimed to have entrusted ten quarters of malt for safe-keeping nearly 18 years earlier.3 KB27/647, rot. 50; 730, rot. 87; CP40/718, rot. 70d. As local tax records show, he was active at Bedford by Henry V’s reign. A roll relating to the subsidy granted to the King in the Parliament of October 1416 shows that he and his father were jointly taxed 4s. A second roll, connected with the same subsidy or that granted by the Parliament of 1417, records that the elder man, then one of the constables of Bedford, was taxed 16d. and his son 2s. These assessments indicate that they were among the wealthier residents of the borough but tell us nothing about their holdings there.4 Bedford subsidy rolls, 1401, 1416-17, BorBD1/2, 6.

Underwood served part of the first of his three known terms as bailiff while a sitting MP. During the second of these terms, he and his co-bailiff, Andrew Rolman, quarrelled with a fellow burgess, John Haukyns, probably in pursuit of their official duties. Hawkyns responded by bringing lawsuits against them at Westminster. Claiming that they had held him a prisoner at Bedford until he paid 40s., he also accused them of breaking into a house of his in the town and of driving away its occupant, one of his tenants.5 KB27/730, rot. 87; 731 rot. 73; CP40/734, rot. 456d. Underwood disappears from view after the last of these terms expired in 1448.