POMEROY, Walter

A mason by trade, Pomeroy’s career is poorly-documented. Nothing is known of his antecedents, and he probably owed his property in Leicester to his marriage to the widow of Thomas Seburgh, a saddler who had been mayor of the town in 1415-16. Seburgh was alive as late as February 1426, but it is likely that our MP had married his widow before December 1427, when he first appears in the town records. In that month William Knytteford alias Glover conveyed a messuage and garden in the parish of St. Leonard’s to the rising lawyer, John Bowes*, the Leicester MP John Pykwell*, and Pomeroy.1 C219/13/4; Leicester Bor. Recs. ed. Bateson, ii. 416, 418. He does not appear in the records again until 5 Oct. 1433, when he sat on the jury which found in favour of Thomas Charite* in what appears to have been a collusive suit with Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor. Soon after Pomeroy came, albeit briefly, to play a prominent part in the town’s affairs. On 24 June 1435 he witnessed a deed for Thomas Gaddesby, a prominent local saddler, and on the following 8 Sept. he was elected to represent the borough in Parliament. Not long after his parliamentary service he was elected to the mayoralty, his first and last experience of local office.2 CP40/692, rot. 106; C219/14/5; Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 448.

Later references to Pomeroy mainly related to land transactions. On 2 Jan. 1441 he and his wife, through the agency of a chaplain, Richard Smert, and a tailor, John Man, settled their lands on themselves for their lives, with the provision that they be sold after their deaths by Walter’s executors and the proceeds disposed for their souls and that of Margery’s former husband.3 Leics. RO, Leicester bor. recs., deeds BRII/8a/224, incompletely calendared in Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 420. On 18 Mar. 1443 he joined Bowes, as the surviving feoffees of William Knytteford, in conveying property in St. Leonard’s parish to William’s son, Richard, a glover of Coventry, and on 26 Aug. 1445 he witnessed Richard’s grant of the same property to a new group of feoffees. Just over three weeks later, on 18 Sept., his own feoffees, Robert Jows, vicar of St. Leonard’s, John Glen, vicar of St. Peter’s, and Adam Racy*, who had presumably been enfeoffed after the resettlement of 1441, conveyed the unspecified lands they held of his feoffment to him and John Pomeroy, abbot of St. Mary de Pratis, Leicester. There can be no doubt that the abbot, appointed to that office in 1442, was a close relative of our MP, and the two men were associated five days later, when they were joined in making a grant of a messuage and garden in the parish of St. Margaret in the northern suburb of the town to a wright, John German, and others. This is the last reference to our MP living. Many years later, in 1472, the abbot granted two messuages in Belgrave Gate in the east part of the town, to the wealthy Nottingham merchant, John Hunt†, and Richard Elkesley, chaplain, and this presumably represents a sale under the terms of the settlement made more than 30 years before. During his life Walter had also held property in the north part of the town in the parish of St. Margaret, but whether in his own right or that of his wife is unknown.4 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 421-2, 430-1; J. Nichols, Leics. i(2), 556.