HARLESTON, John I

More may be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 292.

The deficiencies in the survival of the records of Wilton in the first half of the fifteenth century mean that it is now impossible to discover the full extent of Harleston’s participation in town government. However, it is now known that he was mayor at the time of his fifth Parliament, in 1415. It was during this same Parliament that he obtained a seven-year lease of the subsidy and alnage payable on cloth for sale in Salisbury and elsewhere in Wiltshire, at an annual farm of £80. The lease did not run its full term, coming to an end in 1421. Nevertheless, by September 1437 property belonging to him (eight messuages and 40 acres of land) in Winterbourne Stoke had been seized by the sheriff to recoup arrears of as much as £87 9s. 7d. due on his account. By then, Harleston was dead. It was reported that since his death the property had been held by his kinsman William Harleston,4 E364/72, m. G; E199/48/9. whose relationship to him is not recorded. The MP had died intestate before the Easter term of 1428, when John Scott*, the Wiltshire lawyer who had taken on the administration of his goods, brought suits against his debtors in the court of common pleas.5 CP40/669, rot. 47.