CANON, Philip

A minute book kept by the bailiffs of Dunwich during the early fifteenth century provides additional information about Canon’s career to that supplied in the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 474. He was not a native of the borough and was only received as a freeman on 10 Oct. 1416 (nine days before he entered the Parliament which opened that month), even though he had already worked for some time as town clerk and represented Dunwich as an MP. He became clerk some time before 12 Nov. 1414, when he drew up the indenture for the Dunwich election to the Parliament summoned for later that month (and to which he gained election) and received 8d. for his labours.3 Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. of Dunwich, 92, 94, 128; C219/11/4. In a footnote the editor of the minute bk. states that the indenture was for the Parl. of 1415, but the text of the bk. itself shows that the payment was made during the year Sept. 1414-15, in which accounting period expenses were paid to Thomas James, Canon’s fellow MP of Nov. 1414, while he was in London: Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. 92-93. In the accounting year Michaelmas 1416-17, he received 20d. for writing out the town’s indenture for the Parliament of March 1416 and the return to the writ calling this assembly, and for carrying these documents to Beccles, where, presumably, he handed them to the sheriff. During the same accounting period, he was also paid 8d. for writing the indenture for the Parliament which opened the following October, as well as 3s. 4d. for his ‘care in everything’ and 3s. 4d. for ‘his office of the liberty’ (that is, his clerkship). It appears that a fee of 8d. was the normal sum for his scribal duties at parliamentary elections, for he later received this sum for drawing up another indenture and return, probably those for the Leicester Parliament of 1426.4 Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. 93, 94, 96, 127.

Besides his position as clerk, Canon had other official duties. On several occasions he collected taxes, for the corporation of Dunwich as well as the King, and in July 1425 he and several leading members of the community leased out some lands once held by Augustine Illes† (a prominent burgess of the 1330s and 1340s) to John Luke*. He himself paid taxes as a resident of the parish of All Saints’ in the town, but he was evidently of very modest means. When in May 1423 the corporation imposed a tax to raise the money needed to obtain a confirmation of the town’s charter of liberties, he paid only 5d., considerably less than the 1s. 4d. that the not particularly wealthy Henry Beaumont I* was obliged to contribute. At the end of the same decade, he was included in a list of potential contributors towards building the east quay at Dunwich, but was among those who paid nothing.5 Ibid. 104, 108, 112, 116, 117, 123, 134, 139, 142-3.

The minute book also throws doubt upon the assumption that Canon sat in the Parliament of April 1414. The 18th-century antiquary, Thomas Gardner, who was somewhat prone to error, thought that he and Nicholas Barber† were Dunwich’s MPs in that assembly, but the minute book shows that the men elected were Thomas James† and Thomas Brantham*.6 T. Gardner, Hist. Dunwich, 88; Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. 87. Gardner’s assumption is repeated in The Commons 1386-1421, i. 619; ii. 122, 474. It is unlikely that subsequently both James and Brantham had declined to take up their seats and that Canon and Barber had replaced them although occasionally it was necessary to replace the electors’ original choice, and Canon himself was such a replacement in 1427. The Dunwich election return for that year states that the men elected were John Polard* and Richard Russell‡, but the minute book shows that it was Canon, rather than Russell, who joined Polard in the Commons’ house. There is no record of Russell’s reason for withdrawing. Ill health would seem an unlikely cause, since he helped to assess the tax that Dunwich’s residents paid to cover the cost of sending representatives to the assembly.7 C219/13/5; Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. 96, 132.