The identification of newly-enfranchised Westbury’s representatives in the Parliament of February 1449 presents very real difficulties, as the return is damaged, and only the first four letters of the first MP’s surname are now legible. Prynne, in whose day more of the document may have been discernible, read the Westbury Member’s name as ‘Chabley’.1 W. Prynne, Brevia Parliamentaria Rediviva, iv. 1154. Wedgwood, for his part, speculated that the MP might have taken his name from either of the vills of Broad Chalke or Bower Chalke in Wiltshire, and might have been related to the Chalk family of Salisbury. Alternatively, he suggested, the Westbury seat might have been taken by a member of the Chalers family of Berkshire.2 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 168. Neither theory can be readily corroborated, since Westbury, like many neighbouring boroughs, had a tendency to return outsiders, and no evidence of either a Walter Chalk or a Walter Chalers has been discovered.
On the basis of what remains legible of the MP’s name, possible candidates include Walter Chalcroft, a Somerset man from Wedmore, who in March 1449, while Parliament was in session, joined the archbishop of Canterbury, Nicholas Carent, the dean of Wells, and his neighbour John Priour, to sue out a royal licence for the foundation of a fraternity and guild chantry in the parish church of Wedmore.3 CPR, 1446-52, p. 263.