STOWELL, John, 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

Jan. 1380
Sept. 1397

Family and Education

m. Christine, 2s.1

Offices Held

Tax collector, Wilts. Mar. 1395.

Biography

In September 1369, shortly after sitting in his first Parliament, Stowell acted as a juror at an inquisition held at Malmesbury. Some time within the next three years he was summoned to appear in the London court of trusting on a charge of illegally employing a servant of John Tau of London, whose indentures of service with the latter had not expired. Evidently, he ignored the summons, but eventually surrendered to the Fleet prison and, in October 1372, was pardoned the outlawry he had incurred in the meantime. Described as a merchant, he was assessed at 2s. towards Malmesbury’s contribution to the poll tax of 1379. This sum (the same as was levied on Nicholas Weston*) was the second largest paid by any inhabitant of the borough. In the autumn of 1383 Stowell stood surety for Weston’s attendance in the Commons. He served as a collector of a parliamentary subsidy in 1395 and Member for the fifth time in Richard II’s last Parliament, but is not heard of after 1402, when Robert Andrew II* and Nicholas Sambourn II* obtained a royal licence to grant, inter alia, the reversion of a messuage, four tofts and some land in Malmesbury and the nearby hamlet of Milbourne, held by him and his wife for term of their lives, to Malmesbury abbey.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: Charles Kightly

Notes

  • 1. E179/239/193 m. 15; CPR, 1401-5, p. 117.
  • 2. Wilts. IPM Edw. III (Brit. Rec. Soc. Index Lib. xlviii), 252; CPR, 1370-4, p. 208; 1401-5, p. 117; E179/239/193 m. 15; C219/8/9.