DUNSTER, Thomas

Dunster’s property in Winchester included a shop and stall in the High Street (which were in his possession by 1417), another shop in ‘Helle’, and a tenement with a garden in Shulworth Street. By 1427 he was paying an annual rent of 40s. for another building in High Street, and a year later he had holdings in Gold Street.6 Keene, ii. 147, 153A, 158, 349, 643. Athough described as a draper, his trading interests were by no means restricted to cloth, for he also dealt in wine, hides, iron and grain. Having on 11 Sept. 1426 obtained a royal licence to export cereals to Bordeaux or Bayonne, in the following April he duly shipped 100 quarters of corn from Southampton to Bayonne on The Trinity of Bursledon. The vessel returned home with a cargo of 52 tons of pig iron and an unspecified quantity of resin and pitch shipped in his name. Later in 1427 he and Richard Bolt* dispatched a shipment of corn and cloth from Southampton, of which 30 and a half lengths and three ‘dozens’ of cloth belonged to him alone; and in the spring of 1428, in partnership with Thomas Gardener*, he imported 19 tuns and one pipe of wine.7 DKR, xlviii. 243; E122/184/3, pt. 3, f. 32; pt. 4, m. 2; Port Bk. 1427-30 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1913), 59.

Although Dunster was actively involved in the government of Winchester for 24 years from 1409, he only ever occupied minor offices, never those of bailiff or mayor. In addition to the posts listed above, he was an auditor in 1416-17, warden of the common postern in 1419-20 and auditor for the commons in 1431. One of the two citizens who formally presented Richard Bolt to the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer on 2 Feb. 1419, after Bolt had been elected mayor in place of the recently-deceased Walter Corne, he became a member of the superior body of the ‘Twenty-Four’ by October 1422.8 Keene, ii. 1220; Black Bk. Winchester ed. Bird, 22, 51; Winchester recs. W/D1/106; E1/14, no. 6. Dunster’s two elections to Parliament came relatively late in his career, and it is uncertain whether he attended both sessions of the second one, that of 1429, which was dissolved on 23 Feb. 1430. His fellow MP, William Fromond*, was paid expenses of £4 on 12 Jan. and £4 15s. on 20 Apr., but he himself received nothing directly, although the sum of £4 13s. 10d. also handed to Fromond on the latter date, may have been intended for him.9 Winchester recs. W/E1/16. Dunster contributed a mere 10d. towards the wages of the parliamentary representatives of 1445-6.10 Winchester recs. W/E4/4.

In October 1437 it was alleged in a petition filed in Chancery on behalf of Thomas Shepyer ‘a young child [who] hath non other lyflode to be founde with duryng his tendr age’, that Dunster had refused to transfer possession to him of lands and tenements in the Soke of Winchester in accordance with the will of Shepyer’s late father. Dunster kept the will in his possession.11 C1/9/100, 258. On 20 Aug. 1442 Dunster was among the 12 leading citizens who with the mayor and bailiffs agreed that from henceforth the holder of the mayoralty should receive as his fee ten marks a year from the alnage granted to the city by Henry VI.12 Black Bk. 79. Several years earlier he and William Fromond had been enfeoffed of certain messuages and tenements in Sparkford, of which they were still seised at the time of Fromond’s death in 1446 or 1447. In August 1447 Dunster conveyed the property to William Mayhowe and his wife Edith. He himself died before 2 July following, when his widow and executrix, Beatrice, released Mayhowe from all legal actions pending between them.13 Winchester Coll. muns. 18057-60.