SAUNDRES, John

Perhaps related to Richard Saundres, who was active as an attorney to deliver seisin of property in Dorchester in 1428,2 Ibid. 269-70. John was described as a chapman in 1436, when the widow of Robert More† accused him in the court of common pleas of abducting one of her servants and bondwomen at Stinsford, but as a mercer in a suit of 1441, in which the executors of Robert Mose* alleged he had owed the deceased £8 16s. 8d.3 CP40/701, rot. 205; 720, rot. 360d. He is not known to have occupied an office in his home town prior to his only recorded election to Parliament early in 1447, but was named among the 12 jurors at a court of frankpledge held there on the following 2 Oct. Six years later a dispute arose between him and the wardens of the fraternity of the Virgin Mary in St. Peter’s church with regard to an annual rent of 5s. for a messuage held by him which the wardens said pertained to their chantry. Saundres was bound over in £20 to comply with the decision of arbiters, who ruled on 20 Nov. 1453 that he and his heirs should pay the rent. In the award Saundres was given the alias of Langton, but he does not appear to have used this alternative name often. The dispute seems not to have unduly affected his popularity in Dorchester, for he was subsequently elected bailiff for three terms, and occasionally placed in positions of trust, for example as surety for the attendance of Robert Brunyng* in the Parliament of 1455, as executor of the will of John Kychyn, made in 1461, and as a feoffee of the property of John Churchill.4 Dorchester Recs. 114, 295, 320-1, 703; C219/16/3.

Saundres was listed as a potential juror at sessions of oyer and terminer held in Dorchester in May 1462, but not pricked in the event.5 KB9/21/38. There is nothing to indicate that he had taken any particular political stance in the civil war years, but in the summer of 1473 he fell into serious trouble. A royal commission was issued on 10 July ordering the sheriff of Dorset and notables such as John Newburgh II* to arrest him (called ‘John Langton of Dorchester, mercer’) along with another mercer and a cordwainer, and bring the miscreants to the court of Chancery.6 CPR, 1467-77, p. 428. Whatever his alleged offences may have been, he was at large by the following April, and went on to serve again as a bailiff from Michaelmas 1474. Saundres had witnessed deeds in the town regularly in the 1460s and early 1470s, and is last recorded doing so in November 1476.7 Dorchester Recs. 293, 295-8.