HEWET, John

More may be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 369-70.

In a deed of 1460 Anne Villers, widow of John Hewet, was said to hold a tenement in St. Mary’s Church Lane in Leicester. She was presumably our MP’s widow and of the same family as Alexander Villers, who held office as deputy bailiff in the borough in the early 1440s.2 CCR, 1454-61, p. 457; Leicester Bor. Recs. ed. Bateson, ii. 451. It is a reasonable speculation that Thomas Hewet was John’s son by Anne or an earlier wife.

John himself is less well documented than most of Leicester’s MPs. Judging from an action of debt brought against him in 1422 he was a merchant who traded in cloth.3 CP40/644, rot. 244. A deed of April 1433 refers to a tenement ‘late of John Hewet’ in the parish of St. Peter, but our MP appears to have been still living at that date. As late as 1442 he or a namesake was named as an executor by William Babthorp (d.1443), whose wife held the manor of Aylestone near Leicester, and was litigating in that capacity in 1446.4 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 418; PCC 33 Luffenam (PROB11/3, f. 261v); CP40/740, rot. 428.