WYOT, William

Wyot’s family came from Kimmeridge in the Isle of Purbeck, and in 1391 he was named with his parents in a settlement of land there, which the three of them were to hold for term of their lives by grant of Henry Smedmore.3 Clavell mss, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 56. His parents died before 1400, when William confirmed his mother’s feoffees in possession of property in the neighbourhood, which five years later they conveyed to him and his wife. In 1411 as ‘of Purbeck’ he leased more land in Kimmeridge, and he was described, somewhat disparagingly, as a ‘husbandman’ of Little Kimmeridge at an assize of novel disseisin heard in 1415.4 Ibid. 43; Hutchins, i. 563; Dorset Hist. Centre, Weld of Lulworth Castle mss, D/WLC/T70; JUST1/1529, rot. 14. His father’s feoffees retained land in Smedmore from 1392 to after 1414, eventually settling it on William’s son and heir John: Clavell mss, 47, 54, 55. Nevertheless, well before then Wyot had established interests further along the coast in Weymouth, where in 1397 he had acquired a plot of land upon ‘La Leye’, adjoining that belonging to the prominent merchant family of Mountfort. Other property in the town which he acquired subsequently included a toft next to the house of Thomas Cole†.5 CAD, iii. C3198; PCC 27 Marche (PROB11/2A, f. 212). The move to Weymouth may have been prompted by his putative kinship with John Wyot†, who represented the neighbouring borough of Melcombe Regis in 1402, and Bertram Wyot, Weymouth’s bailiff of 1409-10.6 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 931; Recs. Dorchester ed. Mayo, 181.

In Weymouth, Wyot set up in business as a merchant, and although there is little information about his trading interests, he is known to have formed commercial contacts with men of Devon and Somerset; indeed, the places where his debtors and creditors lived suggest that his dealings extended throughout the West Country. For instance, early in the century he sued a man from Honiton for a debt of £6, pursuing him in the law courts to the point of outlawry; and he himself owed more than twice that sum to Robert Wattes of Queen Camel, an amount which was still outstanding when Wattes made his will in 1405.7 CPR, 1401-5, p. 336; Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 18. In August 1411 Wyot authorized his neighbour, William Mountfort*, to collect payments on his behalf in Cornwall. That he was in serious financial difficulties at the time is suggested by an indenture sealed three months later by which he conveyed to Mountfort all his property in Weymouth to keep unless he paid him £74 13s. 3d. before the following Michaelmas; whether he ever managed to redeem the mortgage is unclear.8 CAD, i. C61; vi. C6112 (wrongly interpreted in The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 800 as a purchase by Mountfort of Wyot’s estate). Perhaps in order to protect himself from adverse litigation, Wyot took out a royal pardon in June 1417.9 C67/37, m. 2.

Wyot began to participate in the government of Weymouth around the same time, and two years after attesting the borough’s return to the Parliament of 1417 he served a term as bailiff. His trading activities attracted unwelcome attention in the autumn of 1421. Commissioners appointed to investigate smuggling and other concealments of royal revenue in Dorset heard information that on various occasions within the previous four years several men of Weymouth, including Wyot and Thomas Payn*, had loaded 20,000 woolfells on board vessels at Melcombe Regis, to ship overseas. Yet the jurors expressed uncertainty as to whether or not the required customs and subsidies had been paid, and it may be that the Weymouth men escaped prosecution.10 CIMisc. vii. 608. Wyot was returned for his home town to the Parliament summoned to meet at Leicester in February 1426. Shortly before, he had been bound by statute staple to pay a leading citizen of Salisbury, William Waryn†, £40 for merchandise he had bought from him before the following 24 June. When he defaulted, after the Parliament ended a writ went out for his arrest, but he was never brought to book.11 C241/219/29. Waryn’s executors were still fruitlessly trying to recover the debt more than 30 years later: C241/240/10. Other journeys took Wyot in the following year to Westminster, where he appeared in person in the court of common pleas to sue a chapman from Bryanston for a debt of £30 and another merchant for £6 6s. 8d., and again early in 1431 to bring pleas for sums amounting to £36 against various debtors from Somerset and Wiltshire.12 CP40/667, rot. 354d; 680, rot. 168. Closer to home he had again attended the shire court at Dorchester to attest the returns for Weymouth to the Parliaments of 1429 and 1431.13 C219/14/1, 2.

Wyot died at an unknown date before November 1434. It was then that his widow Agnes and feoffees, including John Abbot I*, formally relinquished their title to his tenement in Weymouth’s High Street (on the quay adjoining the common landing place), to his creditor William Mountfort.14 CAD, vi. C6110. He had died intestate, and Agnes and Abbot were among those in possession of his goods who were sued in Michaelmas term 1435 for a debt of £26 in an action brought by the widow of Robert Penne† of Weymouth and by John Sirla* her fellow administrator of Penne’s estate.15 CP40/699, rot. 26. By then Wyot’s son John had also died, so his heir to family lands in Kimmeridge was his daughter, Joan, who according to Dorset’s historian Hutchins also inherited the property of her maternal uncle John de Estoke, who had died childless. Joan married into the Clavyle family.16 Hutchins, i. 412; Clavell mss, 46, 55.