GATOUR, Richard, of Salisbury, Wilts.

Gatour is first mentioned in 1414-15, being assessed for alnage on as many as 46 woollen cloths sold in Salisbury that year. Two years later he contributed 10s. towards a loan which the citizens made to Henry V. Although his trade was then given as ‘fuller’, later references describe him as a tucker or in more general terms as ‘merchant’. E101/345/4; First General Entry Bk. no. 169; C241/219/36. His property-holdings in the city included a tenement on the corner of Endless Street and Chipper Street, acquired by lease in January 1419, and three months later he was confirmed in possession of a cottage in Dragon Street. To these he later added a building in Minster Street and a messuage in Gigor Street which was settled in jointure on his wife. Salisbury Domesday bk. 2, ff. 39, 41v, 63, 115v-116. Probably a member of the council of 24 by the early 1420s, he subsequently took an active part in civic government, attending many of the assemblies convened in the course of almost 20 years. First General Entry Bk. no. 216, and passim to 302. These assemblies included the parliamentary elections held in 1422, 1423, 1429 and 1432. Ibid. nos. 231, 236, 265, 282. Service as a chamberlain was followed by election in 1423 as coroner in the city, a post he held for eight years. In March 1425 he was among those who agreed to enrol as brethren of the fraternity of Holy Trinity, undertaking to pay an annual sum for the relief of the poor and debilitated in the hospital. When, in the autumn of 1426, major disagreements arose between the mayor William Warwick* and the outspoken mercer Thomas Freeman*, Gatour was one of those chosen to arbitrate between them. Ibid. nos. 247, 256. Besides his participation in civic administration, Gatour occasionally appeared as a juror at inquisitions post mortem conducted in Salisbury. CIPM, xxii. 787.

Perhaps a measure of his increasing prosperity, Gatour’s contributions to loans which the city made to the Crown grew larger over the years, rising first to 13s. 4d. and then to as much as £1 (this last towards a loan of £40). He also gave money for the maintenance of the common ditch and lent a mark for repairs to the tenements belonging collectively to the mayor and commonalty. In March 1430 he was named as an assessor for raising the expenses of Salisbury’s MPs in the Parliament just ended. First General Entry Bk. nos. 213, 224B, 254, 262, 270, 273, 288, 297. Three weeks after his election as mayor, at the beginning of November that same year, he was one of five citizens, headed by the former mayor Robert Warmwell, who obtained a royal licence to grant in mortmain to the commonalty five messuages worth £4 p.a., this being in part satisfaction of Henry IV’s grant allowing the citizens to acquire land worth 100 marks a year in mitigation of the charges, collections and subsidies incumbent upon them. CPR, 1429-36, p. 101. As it was not feasible for Gatour to be mayor and coroner at the same time, a writ went out from Chancery on 28 Jan. 1431 for his dismissal as coroner, yet it was not apparently until late July that the civic assembly formally elected a replacement. CCR, 1429-35, p. 78; First General Entry Bk. no. 275. While he was mayor a serious lollard rising broke out across the region, and in May a general proclamation was issued against those who posted seditious bills. His endeavours enabled the arrest of the traitor John Longe of Abingdon, who had delivered such bills to the heretic John Keterige. Accordingly, on 4 Nov. instructions were issued to the Exchequer that he be not only rewarded with £20 for his labour but also given half of the goods confiscated from Keterige. Payment was made on 23 Feb. following. E404/48/125; E403/700, m. 13.

At a convocation at Salisbury on 26 June 1433, which he himself attended, Gatour was elected with William Warwick to the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster 12 days later. It was dissolved at the end of its second session, on 21 Dec. The writ for the two MPs’ expenses instructed that each of them should be paid £11 16s. for 118 days’ service, at the normal rate of 2s. a day; but although Gatour was duly paid in the following spring, Warwick’s payment was delayed for nearly a year. First General Entry Bk. nos. 289, 295-6. Internal quarrels among Salisbury’s elite led to the nomination in January 1437 of a committee of 13 citizens, including Gatour, to decide how to penalize the mayor (Thomas Freeman, once again causing trouble), for his unpleasant behaviour towards the city chamberlains. Initially agreeing to fine him £3, they then excused him from making payment. Ibid. no. 326.

For whatever reason, thereafter Gatour ceased to play any part in the government of Salisbury. Indeed, he moved away from the city to set up in business in Winchester, still a thriving centre of the cloth trade. During the 1440s he had substantial quantities of alum and woad carted from Southampton to Winchester on his behalf, for use in the cloth-finishing process, and also traded there in imported salt, oil and foodstuffs such as almonds. Brokage Bk. 1443-4, i. (Soton. Rec. Ser. iv), 69; ii (ibid. vi), 209-10, 223-4, 261-2, 265-6, 294; 1447-8 (ibid. xlii), 111, 163; Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (ibid. xxxvi), 173. He became a citizen of his new place of residence. The date of Gatour’s death is not known. By 1455 William Swayn* was in possession of a tenement in Salisbury which the MP had once held. In his will (which has not been traced) he left a messuage next to St. Thomas’s cemetery to one John Salmon; the messuage was conveyed to another merchant in 1470. Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 71; Salisbury Domesday bk. 3, G23/1/215, f. 18v.