BAKER, David (d.1455), of Bridgwater, Som.

David (or Davy) Baker was a Bridgwater merchant, who traded in wine and timber. Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1400-45, nos. 711, 712; 1445-68, nos. 754, 768. He inhabited a house in the High Street adjacent to the cemetery of the parish church, St. Mary’s, which he rented from the churchwardens for an annual rent of 6s. His career was essentially a local one, but he was evidently an able administrator, who in 1431 was appointed a tax collector in his home county, as well as being on regular occasions charged by his neighbours with the defence of their interests. Thus, in 1441-2 and 1452-3 the borough’s common bailiffs accounted for the expenses Baker had incurred riding to Wells on the town’s business. In 1443-4 he went on a similar mission to Exeter, and in 1448-9 he was one of two burgesses sent to Taunton to negotiate with the King’s commissioners over a loan to the Crown. Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1400-45, nos. 711, 718; 1445-68, nos. 757, 768. His neighbours, who twice elected him one of the stewards of the merchant guild of Bridgwater, frequently called upon him to witness their property transactions, or to serve as a feoffee of their holdings. One such enfeoffment, that of the lands formerly belonging to William Gosse†, embroiled Baker and his co-feoffees in a drawn out dispute with Gosse’s son and heir, Richard*, which was not settled until 1447. Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1400-45, nos. 663, 684, 701-2, 709, 713, 716, 725; 1445-68, nos. 766, 772; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 472, 490-1. Similarly, that Baker did not enjoy universal popularity is clear from an entry in the borough court roll for 1453-4 which recorded the amercement of one Roger More ‘quia iniuste dispexit’ Baker, who had then been one of the stewards. Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1445-68, no. 771.

Baker’s wife, Joan, predeceased him in about 1449, when the churchwardens of St. Mary’s assigned her private pew to another person, and he himself died in the course of 1455 and was buried in the body of the church. Ibid., nos. 758, 786.