HENTON, William

Given that no-one of the name of William Henton is recorded as a burgess of Wareham or Dorchester in this period, there is a strong likelihood that the MP was the man who had acted as a proxy for successive abbots of Cirencester in the Parliaments of 1426 and 1431. Henton had become a ‘clerk of the abbot of Cirencester’ as long before as the summer of 1412,2 CCR, 1409-13, p. 346. and continued service to the abbots over the next 20 or more years led to him receiving a number of grants of land pertaining to the abbatial estates to hold for his lifetime. These, made by Abbot William Best before 1430, included a messuage and some 360 acres of land in and near Milborne Port in the south of Somerset, and, in grants made to him jointly with his wife Alice, the manors of ‘Canoncourt’ in the same place and that of West Pulham across the county boundary in Dorset, which last was worth as much as £20 p.a. The abbot’s failure to obtain royal licences before making his generous gifts resulted in all these properties escheating to the Crown. When the confiscated estate at Milborne was leased out at the Exchequer in July 1436, Henton himself came forward to offer sureties for the lessee, the Gloucestershire lawyer John Langley II*. He was then described as living at Milborne Port, as he had been earlier in the year when appointed as a collector of parliamentary subsidies in Somerset. In November following the manor at West Pulham was committed back to the abbot, William Wotton, who also received back ‘Canoncourt’ three months later, on 21 Feb. 1437. Henton, styled ‘gentleman’, provided mainprise for him.3 CFR, xvi. 294-5, 307, 320; CIMisc. viii. 85.

At that date Henton was up at Westminster as a representative for the borough of Dorchester, and it may be speculated that he had offered his services to the burgesses as he had other business to transact at Westminster on the abbot’s behalf. As already noted, there is no evidence that he complied with the statutory requirements for MPs to be resident in the constituencies which returned them. Even if he was then living at West Pulham, this was in north Dorset, at some distance from Dorchester. A few days before the Parliament met he had been a witness to the will which (Sir) John Paulet* made at Melcombe in Somerset on 3 Jan. It is possible that he had made Paulet’s acquaintance when both men had been Members of the Parliament of 1433.4 Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 143, transcribed from PCC 23 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 182v).

Besides his employment by the Augustinian canons at Cirencester, this MP may also have been engaged by the Cistercian house at Quarr on the Isle of Wight, for, coincidentally, in November 1431 a William Henton, his wife Alice and their son John received from the abbot of Quarr a grant of property at Newport on the island.5 E326/2844.