GAWTRON, Walter

More can be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 167-9.

Although Gawtron’s father had been a draper, it seems that he himself initially entered the freedom of London as a liveryman of the Clothworkers’ Company, and only later joined the more prestigious Drapers.2 E210/4185.

At some point before the autumn of 1402 Gawtron quarrelled with the one-time bailiff of Ipswich, John Starling†. The details of their disagreement are obscure, but they submitted it to arbitration, only for Walter subsequently to sue Richard Baynard*, to whom the bond guaranteeing that both parties would abide by the arbiters’ award had been given, for its return.3 CP40/567, rot. 240d. Similarly, in the spring of 1403 Gawtron and his business associate Thomas Barsham clashed with the King’s esquire William Allington I* over the alleged non-payment of money owing for various pieces of woollen cloth they had supplied to Allington in the early months of 1400. By the same autumn, the parties reached a settlement.4 CP40/569, rot. 105.

Three years after her husband’s death Alice Gawtron was to inform the Exchequer that her landed possessions amounted to rather less than the taxable minimum value of £5 p.a., a clearly spurious assertion which was nevertheless accepted in return for a contribution of 2s. 6d. to the King’s coffers.5 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (xi). Following the death of Gawtron’s son and heir, William, the title to his possessions became the subject of a dispute between two of his kinsmen, the draper John Marshal (son of Walter Gawtron’s maternal aunt Joan) and John Hunt alias Tebaud, grandson of his paternal aunt Katherine Gawtron, which was only terminated by Hunt’s death in or not long before 1440.6 C139/68/10; CIMisc. viii. 132.