WALKEDEN, William

More may be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 750, where his first Parliament is wrongly given as 1402.

It seems likely that William Walkeden was the same person as William Walkelyn, a burgess of Melcombe Regis who defaulted on attending the borough court at Michaelmas 1397. Not long afterwards he came to physical blows in a quarrel with another townsman, William Helier†, allegedly wielding a stone while his opponent used a club. Eustace Kymer†, another sometime MP for Melcombe, supported Walkelyn in the fracas. The latter was probably a kinsman of Robert Walkelyn, who earlier in the same year had agreed to erect a mill-house in the town.3 HMC 5th Rep. 577.

Yet even if Walkeden began his career at Melcombe, and was well known to the burgesses, it is still possible that he owed his elections to Parliament to his association with the prominent Somerset lawyer John Stourton I*. In 1414 he was party to a transaction whereby Stourton acquired land at Pendomer, and he assisted him further two years later in making a settlement of the Dorset manor of Thornton.4 Som. Archs., Helyar mss, DD\WHh/963; Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 290. When Stourton was elected for Somerset to the Parliaments of 1419 and 1420, Walkeden was present at the shire court at Ilchester to attest the electoral indentures, and, while purporting to be living in Somerset, he himself was returned on the latter occasion for the Dorset borough of Melcombe Regis, thus being in breach of the electoral statutes regarding residence. In all three of the Parliaments in which he may have sat, Stourton was also a Member. Perhaps he himself had some training in the law, but if so he failed to rise in the profession.

As Walkeleyn, our MP served in the 1420s as a juror at inquisitions post mortem held in Dorset for Robert Derby, John Lisle I* and Sir Richard Arundell.5 C138/55/15; 59/49; C139/39/42. Where he lived during this decade is uncertain. He was a feoffee of property at Ilchester in 1424 (albeit on behalf of a Weymouth man, John Abbot I*), and again attested the Somerset elections held there in 1425 and 1426 (on the second of these occasions once more endorsing Stourton’s return to Parliament).6 W. Buckler, Ilchester Almshouse Deeds, no. 115; C219/13/3, 4. Yet when as a feoffee he completed a conveyance of land in Wiltshire in November 1424 the deed was dated at Dorchester.7 Dorset RO, Salkeld (Fifehead Neville) mss, D/SFN/T45. As ‘Walkeleyn’ he was a member of the jury which at Blandford Forum in north-east Dorset presented evidence for the levy of the subsidy of 1431; and he was called ‘of Godmanstone’ (in central Dorset) when appointed a tax collector in the county in the following year.8 Feudal Aids, ii. 122; CFR, xvi. 108.