CARDMAKER, John, of Bridgnorth, Salop.

The Cardmakers were a well-established Bridgnorth family. Two of our MP’s kinsmen were men of some minor importance: Hugh Cardmaker was prior of the hospital of St. John the Baptist in the town from 1453 until the late 1460s, and William Cardmaker migrated to London to become, in the early 1460s, a warden of the Grocers’ Company. CPR, 1452-61, p. 43; C1/25/151; CCR, 1461-8, p. 94. Unfortunately for a precise identification of the MP, there were two contemporary John Cardmakers, and the general habit in the records of distinguishing them as ‘senior’ and ‘junior’ did not recommend itself to the compiler of the Shropshire election indenture of 1450. The MP was thus either the elder John, who was bailiff of Bridgnorth in 1444-5 and 1447-9; or the younger one who held the same office in 1446-7 and 1452-3. Salop Archs., Bridgnorth bor. recs., ct. leet bk. BB/F//1/1/1, ff. 55-56. The elder John is probably not to be identified with the barker, son of Henry Cardmaker, who was an ally of John Bruyn* in the disturbances that overtook the town in the early 1410s: KB27/632, rex rot. 15d; E. Powell, Kingship, Law and Society, 243. There are, however, grounds for identifying the MP with the younger John. First, there is the correspondence in timing between his admission to the freedom and the election of a Cardmaker to Parliament: the younger John was one of 18 new burgesses made in 1449-50, perhaps as a necessary preliminary to representing the borough in Parliament (although it is interesting to note here that he had served as bailiff without being a burgess). Bridgnorth ct. leet bk. BB/F/1/1/1, f. 4v. His admission shows that he was not the son of his elder namesake. The latter was a burgess by 1442-3, and, since the male issue of those already made were automatically admitted to the freedom, the younger John’s admission would not have been necessary if they had been father and son: ibid. f. 4. Second, if one may judge from the few surviving references, the younger John was a more important man than the elder. In 1445 he leased from Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, several parcels of land in the borough for an annual rent of 8s. 6d., undertaking to build on a vacant plot in the High Street, next to a tenement he already held, within a year. Four years later he became the duke’s tenant in respect of other scattered parcels of land for a rent of a further 3s. 10d. Egerton Roll 2190. Little else is known of him. Like others of his family he was a barker (alias tanner) and, as such, paid a fine of 40s. in King’s bench in Easter term 1446 for an unspecified economic offence. He appears to have been dead by the early 1460s. In the accounts for the duke’s Bridgnorth property for Michaelmas 1463-4 his name has been crossed out and replaced by those of Richard Kyngslowe (his fellow bailiff in 1452-3) and of a chantry chaplain. Since his leases still had time to run, it is probable that our MP was dead. KB27/740, fines rot. 1d; Staffs. RO, Stafford fam. mss, D641/1/2/59, m. 8.