MOSE, Robert

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 796.

Although it is not certain that the MP held property outside Dorchester, he may have been the ‘husbandman’ of Gussage St. Andrew in the north-east of the county who was sued for taking crops worth £5 in 1419. CP40/635, rot. 262. However, the principal occupation of Mose of Dorchester was that of a mercer. KB27/693, rot. 24. He may have had interests in the overseas trade, conducted through the Dorset ports of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis. This may account for his service on the jury at Melcombe in September 1430 which gave evidence to royal commissioners about the inhabitants’ inability to pay the fee farm and parliamentary subsidies as a consequence of natural disasters. E143/25/1.

Mose died before Hilary term 1441, when his widow and John Pasco, acting as his executors, brought suits in the court of common pleas to recover debts of £82 owing to him. Among his debtors were a former apprentice of his, a mariner from Weymouth and John Saundres*, the mercer who was to sit for Dorchester in Parliament six years later. CP40/720, rot. 360d; 722, rots. 84, 230. By the summer of 1445 his widow had taken another husband, Richard Wyse. CP40/738, rot. 285d. Meanwhile, Mose’s putative son, John, had attested the Dorset elections of 1442.