ANDREW, William, of Somerset.

There is no obvious local candidate for identification as the Bridgwater MP of 1442, but it is likely that he was the man of this name who was among the jurors taking the Somerset inquisitions post mortem of Robert Greyndore* and Thomas Sambroke (respectively at Ilchester and neighbouring Queen Camel) in November 1444. CIPM, xxvi. 226, 342. Nothing to connect this man directly with the borough he represented in the Commons has been discovered, unless he was the man styled ‘literate’ who in February 1443 served as proctor for John Capron, when the latter was instituted to the parish church of Hawkridge at the presentation of Alexander Hody*, the prominent Bridgwater parliamentarian. Reg. Stafford, ii (Som. Rec. Soc. xxxii), 912. There were several other men of this name active in the south-west in this period, including an Exeter merchant and shipman, owner of Le Trinite de Excester (E122/40/37, m. 2; 40/35, m. 3; 41/1), and a lesser man from Barnstaple, accused in early 1458 of complicity with Walter Gaynecote* in imprisoning one of the servants of William Bourgchier, Lord Fitzwaryn (CP40/788, rot. 304).