PRAT, Richard I, of Canterbury, Kent.

A draper, Richard Prat was admitted to the freedom of Canterbury on 17 Dec. 1408, a privilege for which he paid 10s. CCA-CC-F/A/1, f. 84v. Within three years he had joined the ranks of the city’s governing class, gaining election as one of the cofferers at Michaelmas 1411. Five years later, he became a jurat, an office in which he served four further terms before his return to his first Parliament. He received wages from the city for 78 days’ attendance at Westminster in 1425, suggesting that he remained there for the duration of the parliamentary session. Ibid. f. 169. A mark of his growing status within the city and east Kent was his membership of a group of 11 individuals (also including John Sheldwich* and Henry Lynde* of Canterbury and John Dreylond* of Faversham) to whom Willam Bernes and John Rollyng conveyed lands in Newchurch, Kent, in September 1427. CP25(1)/114/301/175. Prat does not seem to have been involved in Canterbury’s business in the law courts and with the royal government, but he was respected enough within the city to be returned to three more Parliaments. His second, that of 1431, took up 51 days of his time, but this more than two weeks less than the duration of this short assembly, and 11 days fewer than his fellow MP, the lawyer John Sheldwich, devoted to it. It was during 1431, possibly as part of his duties as an MP, that the civic authorities sent Prat to see the chancellor of England (Archbishop Kemp) at Leeds castle in Kent. His errand concerned the return of John Bonnington*, a servant of the bishop of Rochester, as one of Canterbury’s MPs to the Parliament of 1429. The return had been contrary to an election made in the burghmote, and the purpose of his meeting with the chancellor was to ensure that it did not serve as precedent and to ensure the city’s future independence in parliamentary elections. CCA-CC-F/A/1, ff. 205v, 206.

In the following year, however, Prat’s position within the civic elite came under threat, for he was deprived of the freedom of the city at a meeting of the full burghmote in February 1432. He suffered this sentence because, ‘in disregard of the faithful service that every freeman owes the city’, he had accepted a judgement in a plea brought before the King’s court of the marshalsea, recently held at Westgate in the city’s suburbs, against one Richard Colbrond of Canterbury. He was readmitted to the freedom only after the payment of a fine of 20s. Ibid. f. 219v. In spite of his indiscretion, Prat was returned as burgess for a third time to the Parliament of the following May. On this occasion both he and his colleague, William Billyngton*, received wages for 72 days, allowing for the full duration of the session and time spent travelling. Ibid. ff. 212v, 218v.

Just under two years later, the government included Prat in its list of those residents of Kent whom it expected to take the widely administered oath not to maintain peace-breakers. CPR ,1429-36, p. 389. At Michaelmas 1434 he was once more elected a jurat, but after that term as such expired he did not play an active role in the government of the city for another 20 years, a long and unexplained absence from civic affairs. In the meantime, however, he appears to have retained contacts among the Canterbury elite, for in August 1441 he and three other local men, including Thomas Prowde, the serjeant of the common chamber, demised lands in Chartham which they had by the enfeoffment of one John Morle. Canterbury city recs., Woodruff’s list, CCA-CC-WOODRUFF, bdle. 36, no. 2. Further evidence that Prat remained in the Canterbury area during this period is an action of debt he brought against a carpenter from Charing. CPR, 1441-6, p. 124.

The re-election of Prat as a jurat at Michaelmas 1454 marked his return to office-holding at Canterbury. In the following year he was returned to his final Parliament and his standing in the city was confirmed by his election as its ninth mayor in 1456. Soon after the end of his mayoralty, he faced action in the Chancery on the part of William Goold, for unjustly imprisoning the latter and his wife during the course of an action for debt brought before the mayor’s court and of wrongly refusing bail. C1/26/194; 1502/11. Goold referred to himself as a onetime servant of the late master of the rolls, John Stopyndon (d.1447), although he does not feature in the last will that Stopyndon, himself originally from Canterbury, made in 1442. Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, f. 148.

Following his year as mayor, Prat served twice more as a jurat but there are no further references to him in the Canterbury records after Michaelmas 1460. By this date, he was an old man and it is likely that he died shortly afterwards. He was buried in St. Margaret’s parish church, Canterbury, where a monumental inscription once existed. Somner, app. 72. Just a little is known of his property holdings and personal connexions. In 1436, for example, he was assessed at £8 p.a. towards the subsidy of that year, E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (iv). and William Wodelond of Faversham, formerly the city’s cofferer, enfeoffed him, John Freningham* and John Founteyn of lands in Fordwich, Kent, at some stage before August 1457. Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Canterbury archdeaconry ct. wills, PRC 17/1, f. 198. It is unclear whether Prat and his wife Alice had any children. A William Prat was among those upon whom the MP enfeoffed lands in St. Margaret’s parish in 1458: possibly he was Prat’s son, or, more likely, his brother, as there is no record of his admittance to the freedom of the city. CCA-CC-O/A/1, f. 48v.