WILKINS, Robert

In April 1413 Wilkins appeared as proctor for Robert Boreton, a chaplain who had been presented to the chantry of St. Mary at Marnhull (to the south of Shaftesbury) by the lawyer William Carent*.2 Reg. Hallum (Canterbury and York Soc. lxxii), 407. Although later described as a notary, he achieved sufficient standing in Shaftesbury to be chosen as mayor in 1423, and as such he witnessed a deed relating to property in the town which was sealed in the chapter house of Maiden Bradley priory in June 1424.3 E326/3245. Some 18 months later the burgesses elected him to the Parliament summoned to meet at Leicester in February 1426. Perhaps his links with Carent, returned to the same assembly as a knight of the shire for Dorset, had something to do with his successful candidacy, for Carent was well known in the locality as a kinsman of the abbess of the important nunnery at Shaftesbury, which held the borough at farm from the Crown. It may even be the case that the abbess employed Wilkins in his notarial capacity. In May 1428 Wilkins served as a juror at the inquisition post mortem held at Shaftesbury on Sir John Berkeley† of Beverstone, who had shared the issues of the manor of Shaftesbury with the abbey.4 C139/35/50. As administrator of the goods of Thomas Wyse, who had died intestate, in 1433 he was sued in the common pleas for a debt of £7 owing from the estate of the deceased.5 CP40/689, rot. 52d.

Wilkins is last recorded as a witness to local deeds in April 1443.6 Shaftesbury Recs. ed. Mayo, 77, 78 (D24, 32, 36, 39). He may have been a forebear of John Wilkins, who attested the Shaftesbury elections to the Parliament of 1478.7 C219/17/3. There is nothing in the will of the Robert Wilkins who died in 1499 to link him to his namesake of Shaftesbury. The younger man had been dep. to the farmer of an estate at Urchfont, Wilts., belonging to St. Mary’s abbey, Winchester, in 1469-70, and farmer and storekeeper for the abbess in the 1470s: Wilts. N. and Q. v. 61, 62, 154-7.