GERARD, William

A little more has been discovered about this lawyer and landowner who dominated the representation of Wareham over a ten-year period. For the earlier biography, see The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 178. Towards the end of his life he was married to a woman called Edith, although whether she had been his wife at the time of the birth of his son and heir some 20 years earlier is impossible to say. Edith joined him in bringing a suit in the court of common pleas in Hilary term 1443 when six people were summoned to answer for dispossessing them of a messuage, land and rents in Sutton Poyntz. This may well be the property Gerard had acquired there three years earlier. CP40/728, rot. 350; Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 345. The scale of Gerard’s purchases of land in Dorset in his later years was not fully appreciated in the earlier biography. Among his most important acquisitions was that of the substantial holdings in Wolfeton which were conveyed to him by the son and heir of John Jordan*. Dorset Feet of Fines, 353-4.