SALTER, John II

Of obscure parentage, Salter had established himself as a merchant in the Cornish port of Fowey by the early 1430s. His business appears to have expanded rapidly. By the end of the decade he maintained an account with the London branch of the Borromei bank, and even by that time he was probably trading in commodities such as woad and wine with alien dealers.5 H. Bradley, Views of Hosts of Alien Merchants, 62, 85, 244. At an uncertain date before 1455 he seems to have been admitted to the freedom of the London Haberdashers’ Company, as by the mid 1450s he was occasionally styled a ‘citizen and haberdasher’, but the focus of his career remained firmly in the south-west.6 CP40/778, rot. 501; C67/41, m. 23; 45, mm. 33, 34. He is not known to have made his mark in local office, so it may have been connexions built up in the course of his trade to London which recommended him to the authorities for appointment as controller of customs in his home port and nearby Plymouth in the spring of 1431. Certainly, he was already acquainted with another future customs officer in these ports, Thomas Treffry, in association with whom he was said to have violently driven his Fowey neighbour John Smyth from his house in February 1429.7 KB27/679, rex rot. 9. The matter may have been settled by arbitration, for Salter paid a fine to the Crown for the offence and within a few years was trading in partnership with Smyth. In any event, the authorities did not take too severe a view of the incident, for Salter went on intermittently to hold various customs offices throughout the 1430s and 1440s and was occasionally appointed to royal commissions mandated to investigate instances of piracy in Cornwall. It was in the course of the execution of one of these commissions in late 1444 that he came into conflict with one Thomas Colan who – so he alleged – tried to prevent him from fulfilling his mandate by threats.8 CPR, 1441-6, p. 338; KB9/271/1; C1/16/730. Alongside his official duties Salter continued to trade across the Channel, and as far away as Iceland. As a customs official he was technically barred from doing so, and the periodic interruptions in his official appointments may have been designed to allow him to pursue his own business dealings. At Easter 1448 he was nevertheless summoned into the Exchequer to answer for the voyages of the Trinite from Iceland with cargoes of stockfish, but at other times the authorities were more supportive of his private ventures.9 E122/113/55, f. 13d; E159/224, recorda Easter rots. 2d, 6. At several points in the early 1460s Salter was granted safe conducts to allow Norman prisoners he had taken in the course of privateering expeditions to trade for their ransoms,10 C76/145, m. 7; 147, m. 10. while in November 1464 he had special licence to ship Gascon wines to Brittany in two vessels of 80 tons each, called La Trinite and Le John of Fowey.11 C76/148, m. 8.

Otherwise, Salter’s career was unremarkable. Although he never used any of the wealth he gained in his trade to acquire significant estates in a bid to enter the ranks of the landed gentry, he was not without connexions among the landowners of the south-west. His only child Elizabeth married John Herle of Prideaux, a cadet of an influential if relatively newly-arrived Cornish family. Salter himself formed an association with Sir John Arundell II* of Trerice, for whom he acted as a mainpernor in 1453.12 Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 219; CFR, xix. 35. Other local men for whom he performed similar services included the unruly Oliver Tregasowe* for whom he stood surety in Chancery in 1464.13 C244/99/126; KB27/798, att. rot. 1.

Like other customs officials both Salter and his colleague Vincent Pitlesden* found themselves obliged to advance substantial sums of money to Henry VI’s struggling government in the early 1450s, but as opposed to many of their fellow creditors they, on account of their official positions, had no trouble securing early repayment.14 E401/824, m. 13; E403/786, m. 8; 791, m. 7. His repeated appointments under a succession of treasurers suggests that he was regarded as a safe pair of hands, and (particularly in the crisis years after 1453) deemed to stand above factional loyalties. He thus remained in post both during the queen’s ascendancy in the aftermath of the Yorkist rout at Ludford Bridge, and during the short-lived Yorkist administration after the Lancastrian defeat at Northampton had placed the King and the government in the hands of the Yorkist lords. He did, indeed, continue to serve until the summer of 1466 when his lengthy official career finally came to an end.15 E122/114/3; E403/827A, m. 8; 829, m. 4; E405/42, rot. 3.

The date of Salter’s death is not recorded, but it had occurred by early 1474, when his widow was engaged in litigation over the execution of his will. His sole heir was his daughter Elizabeth Herle.16 CP40/850, rot. 137d; 852, rot. 434; Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 79, 219; Vis. Devon, 150.