CARENT, William

More information can be added to the earlier biography.6 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 480-2.

Carent was born in the closing years of the fourteenth century.7 He was said to be ‘60 and more’ in the early 1460s: C4/6/95. Before his unusually long career in public service began, he joined the royal army which crossed to Normandy in July 1417, as a mounted man-at-arms in the company led by Sir Hugh Luttrell†,8 E101/51/2. one of the leading gentry of his home county, but this is the only occasion that he is known to have engaged in military activity. How long he remained overseas is uncertain, although it is clear that he did not stay in France as long as Luttrell, who as lieutenant of Harfleur and later seneschal of Normandy probably remained there until early in 1421. Carent himself had returned home in time to be appointed escheator of Somerset and Dorset in November 1420, and elected for Somerset to the Parliament summoned for December that year.

Although Carent was never a member of the quorum on the Dorset bench, his appointments continued without break for over 45 years, and there is evidence that he took his duties seriously.9 E101/586/11, mm. 1, 3; 32, m. 2. His close association with his brother-in-law John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, led to a brief period (for two years from Michaelmas 1449) when he received fees and livery as an esquire of the King’s hall and chamber, at a time when Stourton was treasurer of the Household,10 E101/410/3, f. 31; 6, f. 40. although there is no sign that he ever attracted particular royal favour. Over the years, Carent saw fit to purchase several pardons, in part to exonerate him for misdemeanours while serving as sheriff or j.p., but also no doubt to cover his many legal transactions as a trustee of landed estates. Such pardons were acquired in 1446, 1452, 1455 (with his wife Margaret), 1458, 1465, 1468 and 1471.11 C67/39, m. 48; 40, m. 17; 41, m. 17; 42, m. 34; 45, m. 4; 46, m. 21; 48, m. 25.

Carent’s appointment as steward of Shaftesbury abbey was probably made at the nomination of his first wife’s aunt, Margaret Stourton, who was abbess from 1423 until her death in 1441, and he was commissioned to take the fealty of her successor. The fact that he was still steward in the 1470s is proof enough of the high regard in which he was held. Otherwise, there are glimpses of Carent in the law courts, such as the time in 1444 when he was summoned to the common pleas to answer three members of the Dygon family for failing to pay them £5 for a horse he had bought from them. He alleged that the Dygons were bondmen on one of his manors in Somerset, but a jury stated that they were of free birth and found against him.12 CP40/734, rot. 331. This perhaps reveals a different side of his character than the one of a conscientious, trustworthy and diligent member of the gentry suggested by his frequent employment as a feoffee and executor.13 In addition to the examples given in the earlier biography, he was a feoffee for John Gregory of Bruton and supervisor of his will of 1429: Som. Archs., Helyar mss, DD\WHh/622, 624-7, 630-1. The discovery that Carent was named as an executor by William Westbury j.KB lends further weight to the suggestion in the earlier biography that he was trained in the law. His friendship with Westbury was a close one, cemented by the marriage of his daughter to the judge’s son and heir, and under the terms of Westbury’s will of 1448 Carent and his wife received handsome bequests of plate and jewelry.14 R.C. Hoare, Modern Wilts. (Westbury), 17-19; CP40/784, rot. 172.

It has also come to light that Carent was a book-collector of note, and that certain of the fine manuscripts he owned still survive. One of them contains no fewer than 69 miniatures by an exceptional artist, who specialized in painting landscapes.15 John Rylands Univ. Lib., Manchester, MS Eng 1; described by K.L. Scott, Later Gothic MSS, ii. 261. He owned a copy of Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady,16 Yale Univ., Beinecke Lib., MS 281, which has depictions of his coat of arms (argent, three roundels azure with three chevrons fenne) on ff. 5v and 6. and another of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, which he bequeathed to Shaftesbury abbey together with ‘librum vocatum gratia dei’.17 Add. 11748; A.I. Doyle, ‘English Bks.’, in English Court Culture ed. Scattergood and Sherborne, 174; A.S.G. Edwards, ‘MSS and Readers’, in Companion to Med. English Literature ed. Brown, 103-4. Carent’s copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which he lent to a kinsman, was eventually returned to his grandson in 1501.18 Som. Med. Wills, 1501-30 (Som. Rec. Soc. xix), 20.