What little is known of Camberton suggests that he was one of the more important men to represent Carlisle in Henry VI’s reign. He was a member of a minor gentry family, which, judging from actions in the court of common pleas, existed in two branches, one established at Camerton on the Cumberland coast, and the other at Penrith. William belonged to the former branch, at least if one may judge from a law suit of 1426 when he and John Camberton, perhaps his brother, sued a husbandman for close-breaking at Brigham near Camerton.
If so, Camberton may also have owed his election to Parliament a few months earlier to this connexion, although it is at least equally likely that his parliamentary patron, if he had one, was a lesser man. This is suggested by two curious coincidences. First, his fellow Carlisle MP in the Parliament of 1427 was the well-connected local lawyer, John Helton*, who two years previously had represented Appleby in company with Robert Roche*, the husband of Alice, widow of our MP’s kinsman (perhaps even his father) John Camberton. Second, in February 1426 our MP’s putative brother, John, offered pledge for the payment of a fine by Helton. It may thus be that he owed his election to Helton’s influence.
When Camberton had engaged to serve in Montagu’s retinue, he had undertaken to bring with him a man-at-arms and six archers, suggesting that he was a man of some substance. He continued that military career into the 1430s. In November 1431 he was in the garrison at Falaise serving under Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, and in the following May he took the field under the same commander. It is not clear what happened to him thereafter. If he was the same man who joined the force led by John, Lord Talbot, in 1437, it is strange that he should have been styled there ‘archer’ rather than man-at-arms.