KNAPTON, John

More may be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 526-7.

The records of the court of common pleas at Westminster, which style him a ‘merchant’, provide fuller evidence of Knapton’s commercial dealings in London. As the previous biography notes, he surrendered himself to the Fleet prison in 1403, following legal action by one of his creditors, but it fails to provide any further detail. The creditor in question was one John Bocle, for whom Knapton appears to have acted as some kind of agent. In pleadings of Hilary term 1402, Bocle stated that he had entrusted various sums of money to Knapton for the purchase of caps, hats and other merchandise some half a dozen years earlier. Afterwards, an audit of October 1397 had revealed that Knapton was in arrears to him by £20 9s. 5d., a sum that the latter had failed to pay. Although an assize jury sitting at London in June 1402 found for Bocle, Knapton delayed for nearly another year before surrendering to the Fleet and settling with his opponent. Nearly two decades later, the executors of Alice Sewall of London sued Knapton for 40s., a sum that they alleged he owed for a purchase of iron from her at Cambridge, and those of the late London fishmonger, Thomas Browning, took action against him for £7.2 CP40/564, rot. 232; 642, rot. 467; 644, rot. 444.