Family and Education

m. Isabel.

Offices Held

Reeve, Salisbury 1 Nov. 1403-4; constable 1412-13.1

Biography

Child came from Ditchampton, a few miles outside Salisbury. A mercer by trade, he presented 19 whole woollen cloths for alnage in the financial year 1402-3. He was also part-owner, with John Montagu and other Salisbury citizens, of a 140-ton ship called the Katherine of Salisbury, which in October 1402 was arrested at Southampton and pressed into royal service, but he seems to have relinquished his interest not long afterwards. In December 1404 he acted as a surety for Montagu when the latter farmed at the Exchequer the subsidy and alnage on cloth for sale in Wiltshire, and in March 1408 he acted in the same capacity when his associate renewed the farm. He was a member of the convocation of Salisbury from no later than 1407 until his death.2

Child died between 10 and 25 Oct. 1413. His will shows him to have been comparatively well-off: apart from various bequests to religious institutions in Salisbury itself (including a gift of 6s.8d. to the tailors’ guild), he left money to the parish churches of Wilsford-by-Amesbury, Wilton and Ditchampton (with a request to the vicar of the last named to pray for the souls of his parents and family), and to the poor of Winterslow. His widow Isabel was to have a life interest in two tenements and several shops in Salisbury. Among those appointed as his executors were William Walters* and a man who lived at Beckington, one of the cloth towns of Somerset.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: Charles Kightly

Notes

• 1. Salisbury RO, ‘Domesday bk.’ 2, f. 45; ledger bk. A, f. 46.
• 2. E101/345/4; CPR, 1401-5, p. 196; CCR, 1402-5, pp. 259-60; 1405-9, p. 186; CFR, xii. 276; xiii. 99; ledger bk. A, ff. 29, 34, 41.
• 3. PCC 28 Marche.