HAT, John

The identification of Launceston’s MP of 1442 presents some difficulty, for no man of this name is known to have been active in Cornwall in the 1440s. In the light of this, Wedgwood’s suggestion that the clerk drawing up the sheriff’s return inserted a fake name in the absence of a formal return has a ring of plausibility about it, especially as Hat’s supposed colleague in the Parliament was named in the sheriff’s election return as Henry Notte*, another frequently employed fiction. The Cornish election return of 1442 was unusual in that the sheriff’s indenture was attested by the exceptionally large number of 196 individuals, but unlike previous indentures made no mention of the representatives of the boroughs within the county. The shire elections, which had since 1423 invariably been held at Lostwithiel, took place on this occasion at Launceston (which was to remain their normal venue until the end of the decade), and it may be that the unusual situation of hosting the exceptionally well attended county court had impinged on the burgesses’ ability to make their own choice.1 C219/15/2. Equally, the possibility that Launceston was simply unable to find or afford representatives cannot be excluded.