BAKER, John

Baker was a dyer, and, although one of the lesser men to represent Northampton in this period, he was substantial enough to have had business interests outside the town. In term 1432 the wealthy London grocer, William Wetenale, sued him for a debt of nearly £30 and continued to sue him for smaller sums for the next 11 years.1 CP40/682, rot. 229d; 700, rot. 291; 708, rot. 298d; 728, rot. 376d. These interests no doubt explain why he himself was in London at least twice in the early 1430s, personally pursuing minor actions in the central courts. The first of these shows that he had property at Daventry, some 12 miles to the west of Northampton, for he claimed that a chapman of Coventry had depastured his grass and crops there to the value of a modest 40s.2 CP40/698, rot. 96d; KB27/688, rot. 34d. Little else is known of him before the late 1440s. On 27 Mar. 1449 he entered into a bond in ten marks to one Richard Colles of Preston Capes, not far from Daventry, and on the following 24 Oct. he was elected to represent Northampton in Parliament, in company with a much more prominent townsman, Thomas Hunt*.3 Northants. RO, Knightley chs. 214; C219/15/7. Later, in Easter term 1456 and Trinity term 1458, writs were issued for his outlawry on the King’s suit for an unspecified contempt and trespass, and in the meantime he was sued for a debt of £10 by a London draper, Thomas Wale. Thereafter he disappears from the records. It may be that Joan Baker, who was trading in cloth in the early 1470s, was his widow.4 KB27/778, rex rot. 11; 789, rex rot. 22; CP40/787, rot. 460; E101/343/19.