MERCHAM, John

More may be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 721-2.

During the Easter term of 1425, when Mercham was representing Wallingford in Parliament for the second time, he and two other local men were sued in the court of common pleas by Stephen Morepath for a debt of £30. They were ordered to be attached by the bailiff of the honour of Wallingford and brought to the court the following term. Mercham is described on the plea roll as a husbandman and ‘alias John Chaloner’.2 CP40/657, rot. 45d. Using this alias he witnessed deeds at Wallingford and Clapcot between 1410 and 1428,3 Berks. RO, Wallingford recs., deeds W/RTb 100; Boarstall Cart. (Oxf. Historical Soc. lxxxviii), 264-5, 272, 277, 280. and attested the electoral indentures drawn up in the guildhall at Wallingford for the Parliaments of May 1413 and 1432.4 C219/11/2; 14/3. Since on five other indentures he was called Mercham,5 C219/12/4; 13/4; 14/2, 5; 15/1. it is clear that he adopted the two names indiscriminately. As Chaloner he was appointed one of the Berkshire collectors of the parliamentary subsidies granted in the Parliament of 1432, and it was also with this name that in June 1438 he appeared on the list of just 44 residents of Wallingford drawn up when commissioners came to inquire about the town’s depopulation and economic decline. Although he was undoubtedly elderly by this stage, it is unlikely that he was then as old as 80, as the jurors stated.6 C145/307/5. In March 1432 Mercham had served on the jury at Wallingford at the inquisition post mortem on the prominent local landowner, Robert James*, and acted likewise at the inquiry held in October 1438 following the death of the widowed Agnes Brown, the mother of Thomas IV*.7 CIPM, xxiii. 639; xxv. 31. He is not recorded thereafter.