PARKER, Richard I, of Malmesbury, Wilts.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

s. of William Parker of Malmesbury.1

Offices Held

Biography

Perhaps a relation of John Parker I*, Richard is almost invariably referred to as a resident of Malmesbury in such records of him as remain. But he had many interests outside the borough, and may even have been, like John and several of his associates, a royal servant.

The first mention of him occurs in 1383, when he stood surety for four men accused of a trespass by the dean and chapter of St. Paul’s, London. In 1389 he acted as a feoffee of a small estate at Axbridge, Somerset, on behalf of James Stapleton, a goldsmith from Bristol. Then, in January 1390 and along with Walter Leycestre, a King’s serjeant-at-arms, and Edmund Gyssyng, another royal servant, he stood surety for Robert Waldby, bishop of Aire in Gascony, when the latter took out an Exchequer lease of the alien priory of Pembroke. In July 1391 Waldby, who had been recently promoted to the archbishopric of Dublin, took out a new lease of Pembroke, and Parker and Gyssyng were once again his sureties. On a later occasion, in 1395, Parker again performed the same function, this time for Thomas George, the lessee of the royal manor of Marston Meysey, near Cricklade.2

In the meantime, in 1392, Parker had bought a shop and a house at Malmesbury. He was still alive at Easter 1402, when, with John Chitterne (a clerk of Chancery) and others, he made a quitclaim to Amauri, 4th Lord St. Amand, and his second wife, of the manors of West Woodhay and East Ilsley, Berkshire, and Houghton, Bedfordshire.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: Charles Kightly

Notes

  • 1. Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 156.
  • 2. CCR, 1381-5, p. 289; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xvii), 138; CFR, x. 310; xi. 5, 135.
  • 3. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 156; CCR, 1399-1402, p. 563.