FLOWER (FLOURE), John, of Maldon, Essex.

Flower, a citizen and clothier of London, settled in Essex in about 1398. In December that year he and a fellow cloth merchant purchased property in Havering, Romford, only for Flower to give up his share eight years later. He had already married the daughter of a Maldon draper, and made that town his home.2Essex Feet of Fines, iii. 230; CAD, iii. 3509; vi. C4753.

In November 1401, after several men of Maldon had been arrested at the suit of Lord Fitzwalter and the bishop of London for infringement of their rights as lords of the borough, Flower stood surety for them in Chancery. He is mentioned in the records of the local courts in 1406-7 as an attorney, a manucaptor of the peace and as being fined for making an affray with his servants. In January 1408 he was himself amerced for assaulting John Page, and in June 1409 Page had to find sureties in Chancery to ensure that he would not harm Flower. Their quarrel had still not been resolved four years later; and in the meantime, in 1412, Flower had again been fined in the borough court, this time after threatening another burgess with a dagger. At the elections to the Parliament of 1413 (May) he was a mainpernor for John Burgess of Maldon.3CCR, 1399-1402, p. 489; 1405-9, p. 515; Maldon ct. roll 2 m. 3; 3 mm. 1, 2, 6v; 4 m. 4; 7 m. 2; 8 m. 3v; ct. bk. i. f. 14; C219/11/1.

In 1408 Flower and his wife conveyed land in Maldon to William Hanningfield of Suffolk. Together with Thomas Paffe he held the town common for an annual payment of 10s. between 1411 and 1417; and it was to Paffe that in 1424 he leased a tenement in All Saints’ parish which had once belonged to his father-in-law. Flower died before January 1433, by which date his widow had married Walter Daniel.4Feet of Fines, iii. 250; ct. bk. i. f. 22v; ct. rolls 9 m. 2; 10 m. 3; Maldon deed DB3, 3/11/16.