PANTER, William

The Wiltshire election return of 1427 names the Great Bedwyn MP as ‘Ralph Panter’, but no man of this name has been discovered in Great Bedwyn or its hinterland. It may be surmised that the clerk mistakenly recorded the two surnames used alternately by William Panter alias Randolf (or Ralph), without his first name.1 Several years later, in 1447-8, there was a Ralph Panter who traded in a variety of commodities including fruit, oil and fish between Southampton and Fordingbridge in Hampshire, but no connexion between this otherwise obscure man and Great Bedwyn has come to light: Brokage Bk. 1447-8 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xlii), 76-77, 90-93, 122-3. William Panter alias Randolf came from a minor gentry family of Whiteparish in southern Wiltshire. Few details of his career have come to light, and it is not certain whether he was in any way related to John Randolf†, who had represented Malmesbury in the Parliament of 1414 (Apr.). In the autumn of 1422 Panter alias Randolf was being pursued for debt by several creditors, including the wealthy Bridport merchant William Mountfort*, and within two years he had been outlawed for his failure to appear in court, a predicament from which he extricated himself in November 1424 by purchasing a royal pardon. It may nevertheless have been to protect himself from similar actions that he sought election to Parliament in 1427.2 CP40/647, rots. 47d, 54; CPR, 1422-9, p. 239. If Panter alias Randolf was still alive in 1434, he was perhaps deemed too insubstantial to be included among those required to take the general oath against maintenance.