MARCHAUNT, John I, of Rochester, Kent.

This MP may have been the son of John Marchaunt of Strood who, by his marriage to Alice, sister and heir of John Slappele, a timber merchant, acquired a tenement at Hay wharf in Dowgate Ward, London, of which the couple disposed in 1355.1CAD, i. A1638, 1789. It was perhaps the older John Marchaunt who supplied tanned oxhide for covering a pair of bellows at Rochester castle in 1367-8: Arch. Cant. ii. 120. He himself was already living in Rochester by 1373 when he purchased a messuage there, and he was listed as a resident in the city’s poll tax returns of March 1377. In 1394 Marchaunt acted as a surety in Chancery for a man from Chatham, and in 1398 he witnessed deeds at Rochester. Together with his wife, Mabel, he acquired some more property in the city from John Mateshale in 1400, but it was in the capacity of a feoffee that, in May the following year, he released his right in the Hart atte Hopp to Joan, wife of William Rypon.2CP25(1)107/196/1963, 111/254/14; E179/123/44; CCR, 1392-6, p. 257; Harl. Chs. 46A 25, 50G 47; Arch. Cant. xxi. 315.