HUNT, Henry

Henry Hunt’s origins are unclear, and the suggestion that he was a close relation of William Hunt†, who represented Rochester in Parliament in 1419, finds no confirmation in the will which William made in 1448.3 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Rochester consist. ct. wills, 1440-53, DRb/PWr 1, f. 51. Another factor which lends doubt to this identification is that our MP was commonly known by the alias Baker, both in local records and those produced in the courts at Westminster.

Perhaps initially a baker by trade, Henry was already a member of the city elite by September 1435 when he stood surety for the two men elected to represent Rochester in the Parliament of that year. The following month he sat alongside prominent local figures on a Rochester jury, and later in the decade served likewise at inquisitions post mortem conducted in the city, most notably that regarding the property of the late Queen Joan.4 C219/14/5; E199/20/16; CIPM, xxv. 164, 392.. Before too long he had been chosen as the junior of the two wardens of Rochester bridge, an office he held for at least two years, until Michaelmas 1440 or later. As the junior warden Hunt appears to have spent relatively little time away from Rochester on the business of the bridge in comparison with his colleague, Thomas Glover.5 Rochester Bridge wardens’ accts. 1438-40, F 1/41, 42. After a break, by Michaelmas 1447 he was again serving as warden, this time as the more senior of the two. During this term of office, which lasted ten years, his more onerous duties frequently required his absence from Rochester visiting the bridge’s various properties and dealing with its patrons and benefactors elsewhere in Kent and in London. In his first year as senior warden he travelled on official business to meet Cardinal Beaufort’s executors and the archbishops of Canterbury and York,6 Ibid. 1447-8, F 1/46. and the extent of his travels may be gauged from his itinerary in 1449-50. In that year he was away on bridge business at some point in nearly every month, and visited Maidstone, East Tilbury, Northfleet, Dartford, Birling, Snodland and Langdon, besides making excursions to the capital.7 Ibid. 1449-50, F 1/48; Traffic and Politics, ed. Yates and Gibson, 94. There, in July of this busy year, he found the time to sue out a royal pardon in the aftermath of Cade’s rebellion.8 CPR, 1446-52, p. 341. Towards the end of the same year he was chosen as one of the burgesses for Rochester in the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster on 6 Nov. No details of the manner of his election or his activities in the Commons have survived, but it seems likely that representing the interests of Rochester bridge would have formed an important part of his brief. While still warden, in June 1454 Hunt acted as a mainpernor for Edmund Chertsey*, a local lawyer, when he was granted custody of lands in Kent forfeited by John Bamme† for financially supporting the alleged traitor Robert Poynings*.9 CFR, xix. 85.

Hunt continued as bridge warden until at least Michaelmas 1457, but he also increased his involvement in the affairs of the city of Rochester. As a feoffee for another of its MPs, Thomas Cotyng*, in March 1462 he demised some of Cotyng’s property in Rochester to the widow of Thomas Bolour†.10 Rochester consist. ct. wills, DRb/PWr 1, f. 55; E326/3148. In July 1463 he was one of those appointed to assess the city’s contribution towards the extraordinary parliamentary grant of a subsidy of £37,000. Even so, it may not have been until late in life that, in October 1466, he was first elected mayor. As such he made an indenture in May 1467 with the sheriff of Kent, Sir John Culpepper, certifying the names of the two burgesses elected to represent the city in the forthcoming Parliament.11 C219/17/1.

Hunt’s business affairs had always depended upon the passing trade the bridge brought to Rochester. In November 1433 John Darell* and John Hexham had demised to him, along with Robert Kippyng, Henry Poleyn and Thomas Gardener, an inn in the city called Le Hert on the Hoope. Hunt and the rest agreed to pay the vendors 60 marks in three instalments, the first due on 1 Nov. at St. Paul’s cathedral in London, and six years later Gardener relinquished his interest in the property, leaving Hunt and Poleyn in joint ownership. In 1463 Hunt, by then the sole proprietor, conveyed the inn to Thomas Cotyng and William Testwode, one of the wardens of Rochester bridge, as his feoffees.12 S.T. Aveling, ‘Rochester Inns’, Archaeologia Cantiana, xxi. 315-16. This suggests that his principal occupation may have been running the inn. Indeed, in 1441 he had been styled ‘ostler’ when he was sued for a debt of 100s. in the court of common pleas, and in his will he described himself as ‘inholder’.13 CP40/723, rot. 51.

This will, a long and detailed document, was drawn up on 20 Mar. 1471, and gives the impression that the testator had prospered. Hunt asked to be buried in St. Nicholas’s parish church, Rochester, next to his first wife, Joan,14 Little is known of Joan. In 1458 she was named as one the executors of Thomas Dalton, chaplain of the chapel of Holy Trinity by Rochester bridge, who was probably her kinsman: Rochester consist. ct. wills, 1453-61, DRb/PWr 2, f. 119v. She brought material benefits to her marriage, for in his will Hunt referred to a ‘longe taball and the trestiles therto that standith in my grete parlour that I had with Jone my wiff’. and left money for the works and for several lamps to burn there. He ordered that ten marks from the sale of his inn Le Hert (to be put into effect after the death of his widow) be used to purchase a silver cross for the church, on condition that the churchwardens would not charge his executors for his burial plot. Detailed instructions provided for the disposal of a variety of clothes, jewels, money and household goods to his servants and ‘poor frendes’, the most favoured beneficiary being one Joan Totyngton, who was pregnant. The son of his ‘cousin’, later called his brother, Thomas Hunt, was to receive 20s., while the remainder of his moveable possessions were to go to his widow, Agnes, on condition that she ‘geve a part with here owne handes to my kyndred frendes and pouer servauntes of us both as she wull answere afore God for the sowles of us bothe’. Agnes was also the principal recipient of Hunt’s property in Rochester and its suburbs for term of her life. She was instructed to use the income from Le Hert to buy 13 farthing loaves of white bread every Friday for poor men and women and to maintain a lamp before the high altar of St. Nicholas’s church at her own expense. The sale of the inn was to provide for a priest to sing for Hunt’s soul for one year, and for the mending of the ‘fowle ways’ between Rochester and Chatham. Joan Totyngton and her issue were to have a large tenement, while after his widow’s death his ‘great and little’ stables and gardens outside the city walls were to go to William Bochier, his godson, on condition that he maintain a lamp in the chancel of St. Nicholas’s for 60 years. Hunt’s elaborate provisions for his soul were completed by the instruction that his executors were to pay the 10½d. yearly rent which the prior of the cathedral church had demanded of him ‘for I knew nott where’ for the ‘helthe of my soule and to geve them cause to pray for me’. Hunt added two codicils to his will on 13 and 28 Apr. The first concerned a house which he had left to Bochier. Until Bochier had finished the term of his apprenticeship in 1480, his executors were to apply its profits for his soul. The second concerned a standing cup, originally left to Bochier, but now to be sold and the proceeds similarly applied. Hunt named among his executors his widow and Richard Redeman, a former bailiff of Rochester.15 Rochester consist. ct. wills, 1472-6, DRb/PWr 4, ff. 14-18v.