MORTON, William

Details of the career of this MP are relatively easy to piece together, so long as they were concerned with his activities in or on behalf of the borough he represented in the Commons. At the county assizes held in 1413, Roger Pyjon† of Shaftesbury alleged that William Morton, a tailor by trade, had unlawfully dispossessed him of a messuage in the town’s parish of St. Lawrence. In his defence Morton claimed to be the tenant of the property under the terms of a lease granted by Pyjon’s aunt.3 JUST/1527, rot. 6. Within the next three years he had won promotion to a position of responsibility in Shaftesbury as deputy to the King’s bailiff, although his reputation suffered later on, when he was outlawed for repeatedly failing to appear in the court of common pleas at Westminster to answer John Lambarde† of Wiltshire for a debt of £10. Given the disparaging style of ‘husbandman’, he nevertheless obtained a royal pardon of outlawry in December 1421.4 CPR, 1416-22, p. 356. Nor was this the only lawsuit in which Morton figured as a defendant. In Easter term 1424 John Martin sued him, as this time described as ‘of Shaftesbury, yeoman’, for breaking into his property in the town and taking goods worth £20; two years later he was belatedly accused of unlawful entry into John Drommore’s house there in Henry V’s reign, and he was subsequently required to answer a similar charge of trespass brought by a burgess named Walter Draper.5 CP40/653, rot. 286d; 661, rot. 173d; KB27/693, rot. 47d.

Whether Morton’s duties as the bailiff’s deputy had anything to do with these alleged trespasses cannot now be ascertained. Clearly, he was regarded highly enough in Shaftesbury as to be chosen by the burgesses as mayor at Michaelmas 1428 and elected as the borough’s representative in the Commons at the end of his term of office in the following year. Similarly, a second mayoralty, in 1434-5, was immediately followed by a second election to Parliament. Perhaps he was sent to Westminster for pragmatic reasons: so that he could combine the task of looking after the borough’s interests in the Commons with that of accounting at the Exchequer for the dues Shaftesbury owed to the Crown. A William Morton, presumably the same man, had attested the electoral indentures for Dorset’s knights of the shire who accompanied him to these same two Parliaments. He had also been one of the four burgesses of Shaftesbury named as party to the indentures recording the borough’s returns on two other occasions, in 1427 and 1432. Curiously, in 1437, when he was elected to Parliament for the third time, his name appeared among attestors not only on the county’s indenture but also on that recording his own return.6 C219/13/1, 5; 14/1, 3, 5; 15/1.

A measure of Morton’s standing in Shaftesbury in the 1430s may be derived from his service on juries summoned there not only to provide information at inquisitions post mortem on important members of the Dorset gentry,7 C139/51/51; 54/37; 63/23; 64/32; 65/39; 85/7. but also, in 1431, to supply details about landholders in the county expected to contribute to the subsidy granted in the Parliament of that year.8 Feudal Aids, ii. 122. Furthermore, he was listed among the leading men of Dorset required in 1434 to take the generally administered oath not to maintain those who broke the law.9 CPR, 1429-36, p. 383, his home town being misleadingly spelled ‘Chestesbury’. Following his second mayoralty, in Hilary term 1436 he was attached to answer in the Exchequer for offences against the statute prohibiting officials in a city or borough from trading in victuals while they were in office,10 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 8d. and perhaps this is why he purchased a pardon (in which he was described as a former mayor), on 28 July 1437, after the dissolution of his final Parliament.11 C67/38, m. 1.

During the Michaelmas term of 1435, while up at his second Parliament, Morton had joined the lawyer Robert Rempston* and William Catte* (both sometime MPs for Shaftesbury) in bringing a lawsuit against a local draper and two chaplains on a charge of conspiring to defraud them of certain tenements in the town.12 CP40/699, rot. 437d. Of Morton’s own property little more has been discovered, save that he owned a close in the parish of St. James, which by April 1447 was no longer in his possession. Perhaps he died before that date. No satisfactory explanation has been found as to why in 1430 he had been party to a final concord regarding a moiety of the manor of Winterbourne Steepleton, to the west of Dorchester.13 Shaftesbury Recs. 78 (D48); Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 342.

What is difficult to resolve is the question of the relationship of the MP to the Mortons living at Milborne St. Andrew – situated between Shaftesbury and Dorchester – and more pertinently to his namesake William Morton ‘senior’ of Milborne, who held property in Durnelane in Dorchester from 1426 to 1431.14 Dorchester Recs. ed. Mayo, 258-9, 281. It seems very likely that they were at least known to each other, for in 1442 John Morton of Milborne owned a toft in Shaftesbury’s parish of St. Lawrence.15 Shaftesbury Recs. 77 (D38). In later years John’s widow Agnes was the defendant in suits brought by Thomas Hussey I* and a William Morton for breaking their closes, respectively in Milborne and Shaftesbury.16 CP40/778, rots. 15d, 267d; 789, rot. 46; 800, rot. 102d. Yet the William Morton who prosecuted Agnes belonged to a younger generation than the Sharftesbury MP, and his education, career and higher social standing provide distinguishing markers between them. As a ‘gentleman’, in 1443 this William had been involved in transactions in the parish of St. Andrew Holborn, without Temple bar, the haunt of men of law, and it was in the legal profession that he excelled.17 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 267, 354. In 1445 he and his brother Richard Morton were active as executors of a third brother, John Morton, who had chosen a career in the Church and risen to be rector of Maiden Newton in Dorset and chancellor of Chichester cathedral.18 CP40/738, rot. 536. For this John Morton see Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, ii. 1317-18, although Emden failed to realize that the chancellor of Chichester and the rector of Maiden Newton were the same person, and provided separate biographies. William himself exercised the role of principal officer (deputatus) for successive sheriffs of Somerset and Dorset for more than ten years, from February 1447 until July 1457,19 CP40/744, rot. 109d; 745, rot. 316; 746, rot. 101; 750, rots. 111d; 754, rot. 103d; 757, rot. 104d; 761, rot. 113; 765, rot. 111d; 768, rot. 421d; 769, rot. 407d; 773, rot. 120d; 775, rot. 110d; 778, rot. 116d; 782, rot. 304d; 786, rot. 303d. and became a popular choice as an attorney in the court of common pleas for the prominent Dorset lawyers John Newburgh II* and Thomas Hussey, and as counsel for many of the county’s leading landowners, among them William Stafford*, Thomas Martin* and John Filoll*.20 CP40/738, rot. 127; 745, rot. 410; 746, rot. 329; 778, rots. 73-74, 107, 314; 779, rots. 14d, 450d, 472, 511, 514d. He took on briefs for the abbots of Cerne, Abbotsbury and Glastonbury, for the dean and chapter of Wells, and Sir William Bonville*, Lord Bonville.21 CP40/753, rots. 100, 200d, 306, 466; 768, rots. 56, 145, 404; 773, rots. 263, 453; 775, rot. att.; 781, rot. 430. The career of William Morton the lawyer ended abruptly in the summer of 1457,22 CP40/786, rots. 111, 114, 466d. and as he is not recorded thereafter it must be presumed that he died about that time.

The lawyer fits into the pedigree of the Mortons of Milborne compiled by the Dorset antiquary, Hutchins, as uncle of the famous Cardinal John Morton (d.1500).23 J. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 593-4, 861. However, he lived only long enough to witness the start of the ecclesiastic’s distinguished career, as a student at Oxford, a notary public by 1447, the award of his degree of DCL, and perhaps his appointment in 1457 as chancellor to Edward, prince of Wales.24 Oxf. DNB. Like his other uncle, John, the future cardinal was rector of Maiden Newton: CPL, xi. 176.