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BARTLETT (BERTELOT), Henry, of Bath, Som.
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Bartlett was engaged in the manufacture of cloth at Bath, and between 1395 and 1397 he was assessed for alnage on 23 ‘dozens’ made there. He witnessed a local deed in January 1396, and two years later, described as ‘citizen of Bath’, he obtained a royal pardon for unspecified offences.1
Bartlett’s mercantile dealings earned him a notorious reputation outside the city, for his involvement in a number of piratical raids in the Channel. Thus, in March 1403, as captain of Le Gabriell of Bishop’s Lynn, he joined up with a small fleet led by the infamous Harry Pay of Poole to capture the Sainte Anne, which was laden with 49 tuns of Rochelle wine, valued at £294. In the next month the same flotilla took a consignment of olive oil worth £392 from a Spanish ship, and later in the year they captured a Prussian vessel and her cargo on passage from Spain, for which the owners attempted to recover the hugely inflated damages of £4,363. Despite repeated attempts to bring them to justice, the pirate brood remained secure, though apparently they later fell to squabbling among themselves. On 27 Apr. 1410 Bartlett, when up at Westminster for his third Parliament, obtained a pardon for not appearing to answer William Glover, the owner of the merchandise on board the Sainte Anne, on a charge of trespass, along with John Brandon* of Bishop’s Lynn, the owner of the vessel Bartlett used, and John Roche, the shipmaster. Bartlett also owed Brandon £16, and Robert Coteler of Cirencester, presumably a wool merchant, was his creditor for £32.2
Little evidence remains of Bartlett’s local activities, but he was a member of the committee of four which returned the MPs for Bridgwater in 1410, and he helped perform the same function for Bath’s representatives in 1413.3
