PROUT, John

For a man who was to become one of the leading merchants of the staple of Calais, Prout’s background is surprisingly obscure. Although it is not known whether he was a native of Berkshire, by the early 1440s he was living at Streatley on the Thames below Wallingford, and possessed property there which may have come to him by marriage to the daughter of a local landowner. His wife was buried in the parish church of St. Mary.5 VCH Berks. iii. 515. As an inhabitant of the hundred of Reading, in May 1444 he was pricked as a juror to bring indictments for treason against Thomas Kerver of Reading.6 KB9/245/46. Although convicted, Kerver escaped execution thanks to a papal indult and royal pardon: CPR, 1441-6, p. 278. Down river from Streatley, in the town of Reading itself, he later owned property opposite the market place.7 Berks. RO, Reading recs., deeds R/AT 1/144.

Where Prout served his apprenticeship is uncertain, and few details survive about his early trading activities or when he began to ship wool through the port of London.8 For his shipments from London in Dec. 1452: E122/75/47, ff. 10-12v. Yet by the autumn of 1449 he had already made his mark at the staple at Calais, through dealing in substantial and valuable cargoes of merchandise, and was numbered among the merchants of the staple who together with their former mayor, Robert White*, had at various times made loans to Henry VI which now amounted to £10,700. In response to their demands for reimbursement, on 20 Oct. the King granted that for a term of four years the staplers might ship in London specified quantities of wool and woolfells without paying any customs or subsidies. As Prout, together with White and Thomas Wymark, had lent £367 14s. of the total, he and his associates were permitted to withhold subsidies of up to £91 18s. 6d. a year throughout that term.9 CPR, 1446-52, p. 315. Notwithstanding the danger of suffering further losses, along with three other merchants he later contributed to a loan of 1,000 marks which the staplers made towards the expenses of the royal household. Similar concessions were made to them by the Crown two years later, for repayment of their loan from the customs collected at Ipswich,10 CPR, 1452-61, p. 226. but the debt was still outstanding when Parliament was summoned by writs sent out on 20 Jan. 1453. Prout probably sought election to the Commons in order to help promote petitions from his fellow merchants of the staple. He was careful to comply with the statutory requirements which stated that parliamentary burgesses should be enfranchised in their towns: just six days after the writs of summons were issued he entered the guild merchant of Reading on payment of a fine of 8s. 4d. to the abbot and nothing to the guildhall, ‘quia burgensis majoris est’. The electoral indenture was dated 27 Feb., and when the Parliament met in Reading itself on 6 Mar. Prout was one of seven burgesses, specially attired for the occasion, who rode out with the mayor to welcome the King into the town.11 Reading Recs. ed. Guilding, i. 39, 40; C219/16/2.

The overwhelming problems of the financing of Calais and its garrisons were not to be properly addressed until the following year, when, in April 1454 towards the close of the Parliament, the duke of York, as Protector, reached an agreement with the staplers to renew assignments totaling some 12,000 marks in repayment of long outstanding loans, and to reverse bills introduced earlier in the parliamentary session which were prejudicial to the company’s interests, in return for an advance of 10,000 marks from the company for the wages of the garrisons at Calais. In October warrants were sent out to revenue collectors authorizing the repayment of these most recent loans, which included one of £65 made by Prout. What part he had taken in any debates in the Commons on this matter went unrecorded.12 PROME, xii. 288-91.

Following his service in the Commons for Reading, Prout was shortlisted for appointment as the town’s mayor on 24 Sept. 1456, only to be passed over for selection by its lord the abbot. He never came to occupy the post.13 Reading Recs. i. 46. The later 1450s were a period of difficulty for him. In 1457 he brought suits in the court of common pleas against five butchers from Reading and the miller at Streatley for breaking his closes in June 1450 (at a time of general civil commotion), fishing in his ponds, from which they took ‘meneys’, eels, roach and perch worth £5, and, more unpleasantly, polluting his property at Reading with entrails and blood from slaughtered beasts, causing such distress to his tenants from the foul stench over the next seven years that they had withdrawn from their tenancy. He claimed damages of as much as 100 marks.14 CP40/785, rot. 88d. A later suit (1463) concerned the theft of crops at Streatley worth £20: CP40/810, rot. 93. In these years, too, he was no doubt suffering financially as a consequence of the seizure and sale of the staplers’ wool worth more than 26,000 marks by the soldiers of the garrison at Calais, and the heavy investment which the company of the staple made in 1456 to secure the admission of the earl of Warwick as captain – which held out a prospect of restoring stable conditions for trade.15 G.L. Harris, ‘The Struggle for Calais’, EHR, lxxv. 30-53. On 30 Jan. 1459, perhaps because of impending litigation or his personal financial commitments, he placed his goods and chattels in the hands of well-wishers, one of whom was Thomas Prout (thought to have been his son).16 CCR, 1454-61, p. 353. The landowner John Roger II* witnessed the transaction, and it is significant that when John’s brother Thomas* and several confederates were due to be released from Wallingford castle gaol in September 1460, following the victory of the Yorkist earls at Northampton, Prout was among those appointed by the new regime as commissioners to deliver them. The newly-released Thomas Roger* (who had sat alongside Prout in the Commons of 1453, as a representative for their county), then secured election for Berkshire to the Parliament summoned to assemble at Westminster on 7 Oct., in company with Prout’s fellow commissioner the Yorkist supporter Sir Robert Harcourt*. Prout himself joined them, representing Reading for a second time. Whether or not from this circumstantial evidence alone we might deduce that he too had displayed overt sympathy with the Yorkist cause, clearly his mercantile interests at Calais dictated a commitment to the earls before they crossed over to England. During the previous winter, that of 1459-60, the Lancastrian government had imposed an embargo on all trade with Calais, the Crown owed over £30,000 to the company of the staple, and Prout and his fellow staplers may have felt that they had little hope of ever receiving this sum back unless the regime was overturned.

Yet the staplers themselves were not all in accord. In the course of 1460 one of them, Richard Heyron (an associate of the Lancastrian treasurer the earl of Wiltshire), made serious allegations against his fellows, including Prout (in his capacity as lieutenant to the mayor of the staple, John Thirsk*), John Walden* (mayor sometime that year), John Tate† and others, accusing them of unjustly placing an embargo on the sale of his wool, amounting in value to 13,000 marks, by commanding all brokers, weighers, ‘potters’, treasurers and clerks of the staple not to deal with it. It appears from the depositions Heyron subsequently made in the parlement at Paris (in July 1461) that in 1459-60 he was imprisoned at Calais for nine months before escaping to Bruges where he brought an action against three of the staplers for the recovery of his merchandise, and had appealed to the parlement after the council of the duke of Burgundy had rejected his suit. Meanwhile, in late 1460 the case had been brought before the lords of Henry VI’s Council. The matter long remained unresolved, and had to be considered again, notably by the Council of Edward IV in March 1463.17 Fortescue, 208; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 275-6. It continued until 1478: PROME, xiv. 381. By then Prout had become involved in the new King’s military ambitions. In July that year he was paid 45s. for organizing the carriage of arms and armour to Northampton.18 E403/830, m. 3. But Calais remained central to his concerns. Although Edward IV’s accession had ensured recognition for the claims of the merchant staplers for reimbursement of their loans, the insecurity and penury of his government led to further demands on the company’s resources, in particular for the maintenance of the garrisons at Calais, Guînes and Hammes. On 8 July 1463 the Council authorized a commission headed by the earl of Essex and Lord Wenlock* and including Prout and other staplers, to make a thorough investigation into the extent of the Lancastrian debt in Calais as it stood on the last day of Henry VI’s reign. When the commissioners brought in their report (at the end of the following year) it showed the Crown’s indebtedness at the three fortresses to amount to over £37,160.19 C81/1547/5; C76/147, m. 8; C47/2/50. This state of affairs led eventually to a formal agreement between Crown and company in December 1466. By making the company solely responsible for the payment and maintenance of the garrisons out of customs revenues, the age-long disputes between the treasurer of Calais and the staplers and between claims of current wages and arrears were finally ended. Prout was returned to the Parliament summoned to meet on 3 June 1467 in which these arrangements were ratified in a formal Act of Retainer.20 PROME, xiii. 343-6. On this occasion he represented Berkshire, but since he was not a prominent landowner it must be assumed that he had once more sought election because of his mercantile interests.

Prout served as mayor of the staple at Calais (and ex officio victualler there),21 This involved handling very substantial sums of money: E101/197/10. for two years from April 1469. He expected to live in some style: at the beginning of his term he obtained a licence to ship across the Channel all such stuff as should be necessary for him and his household while mayor, including cloth, plate and jewels.22 C76/153, m. 13. As mayor, he had a diplomatic role to play. Arrangements were made in the spring of 1469 for the assembly of a twofold diet of English and Burgundian ambassadors and merchants, postponed from the previous January. On 1 May Edward IV appointed the bishop of Rochester, Lord Wenlock and others to go to Bruges as his ambassadors, and 17 merchants, including Prout, the mayor of the staple, to act as the representatives of the mercantile community of England. He gave orders that Wenlock, Sir John Scott†, Prout and three other merchants who were already on the other side of the Channel should act alone if contrary winds or any such mischance prevented the rest from reaching Bruges by the appointed day, 12 May. Yet immediately afterwards the diet was postponed a little longer, to 1 June, as it was decided to hold a monetary conference in connexion with it and this made necessary some further planning.23 Ibid. mm. 13, 17, 18; E30/1073/7-10; 1608/2; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 485-6. Prout’s time as mayor was a period of considerable tension as relations between the earl of Warwick and the King reached a crisis and control over Calais once more assumed a major strategic importance. He was still mayor when Henry VI was restored to the throne in the autumn of 1470, and, styled ‘esquire alias merchant of the staple of Calais’, he sued out a pardon from him on 22 Feb. 1471.24 C67/44, m. 1. Yet although Prout was dismissed from the mayoralty in April, after Edward IV returned to power, the King bore him no ill-will, and in due course assigned him further diplomatic tasks. On 18 June 1472 Prout was named on a commission headed by William, Lord Hastings, to treat with the representatives of the duke of Burgundy for the settlement of disputes over the boundaries of Picardy. In this matter he was again associated with John Thirsk, who had replaced him as mayor.25 Foedera ed. Rymer (orig. edn.), xi. 759-60, from C76/156, m. 19.

Prout was styled ‘esquire’ at his election to Parliament for Reading on 2 Oct. 1472,26 Reading Recs. i. 67. but as on his previous appearances in the Commons the interests of neither the gentry or the burgesses concerned him most while the Parliament was in progress. As before, his personal, mercantile concerns were to the forefront. In association with Robert Stokes and Thomas Kesten he had redeemed certain of Edward IV’s jewels from the Italian Tommaso Portinari, to whom they had been pawned. In compensation, they had been given obligations for £2,700 from the mayor and fellowship of the staple, who in turn sought recompense through royal grants from customs’ revenues. During the first recess, on 15 Dec., it was mandated that to recover the sum over the next three years the staplers could retain £900 p.a. from the customs they collected to pay the wages of the garrisons, and the arrangement was confirmed during the second parliamentary session, on 8 Feb. 1473. More particularly, this grant in Parliament dealt with the £21,000 in which the King was bound to the merchants for the future defence of the realm, to be achieved through the fortification of Calais, the financing of the garrisons and the safe-guarding of shipping.27 C76/156, m. 4; PROME, xiv. 119-31; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1053 (which gives the figure £25,000 instead of £21,000). In 1484 when the grant was confirmed the figure for the redemption of the jewels was given, probably erroneously, as £27,000: CCR, 1476-85, no. 1104. Clearly, the presence in the Lower House of such merchants as Prout when the staplers’ business was being debated served an invaluable purpose.

Little else is known about Prout. Surprisingly, he was recorded as a feoffee of lands at Metton and Antyngham in Norfolk, on behalf of one Simon Fynche, an undertaking which involved him in litigation in Chancery, probably in the 1450s, when Fynche’s grandson and heir alleged that he had unjustly refused to deliver seisin to him.28 C1/16/621. Another suit in Chancery, in progress in May 1477, related to bonds he had entered for the purchase of wool at the staple. Twelve years earlier he had been enfeoffed of property in the High Street at Reading, but this he relinquished in April 1478.29 C1/66/135-9; Add Chs. 26410-11. He is not recorded thereafter.

Whether John left surviving children is uncertain. His putative son Thomas had become a member of Edward IV’s household in the 1460s, rose to be an esquire for the body,30 E101/411/13, 15; 412/2. and served as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1469-70 (when John was mayor of the Calais staple). Something of the Prout family’s improved standing is suggested by Thomas’s marriage to the widowed daughter-in-law of William, Lord Lovell (d.1455),31 C1/31/254; 33/74.. but he appears to have died without male issue and before February 1474.32 CPR, 1461-7, p. 223; 1467-77, p. 419.