CRUMP (CROMPE), William (by 1479-1516 or later), of Canterbury, Kent.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1479.2

Offices Held

Common councilman, Canterbury by 1500, chamberlain 1503-5, alderman by 1505, mayor 1505-6, 1509-10; commr. subsidy 1512, 1514.3

Biography

A William Crump, hosier, was admitted a freeman of Canterbury by redemption in 1490. If it was he who was twice mayor and once Member for the city he had in the meantime become a brewer. At a burmote held on 8 Dec. 1506 the city’s brewers complained through their attorney that on the expiry of his mayoral year Crump had returned to brewing, thus contravening the rule exemplified by Edward Bolney, John Crispe and Henry Gosebourn that no ex-mayor should trade as a victualler. The ground of the objection was made clear by the further complaint that Crump had stolen other men’s clients by threatening them that if ‘they will not be his customers, that then he will not be their good master in the court hall of Canterbury’. In his reply Crump denied any such sharp practice, claimed that it was his servants who had revived a disused brew-house attached to his new house and denounced the pretended rule as a violation of the right to follow a lawful trade. The verdict is not recorded, but it did not prevent Crump from becoming mayor again or from being elected to the Parliament summoned during his further year of office. He was paid 16d. a day for the 35 days of the Parliament, and 18d. (not the 16d. recorded by the chamberlain) for 4 days of travel, a total of 52s. 8d.4

Crump probably continued to live in Canterbury until 1514, when he was named a subsidy commissioner there, but had evidently quitted the city two years later when the chamberlains paid someone to go ‘into Thanet to speak with Mr. Crump from master mayor concerning the office of the aldermanry’. There is no list of aldermen between 1509, when Crump was alderman for the ward of Newingate, and 1519, when his name no longer appears.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

  • 1. Canterbury chamberlains’ accts. 1509-10.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from first certain reference.
  • 3. Canterbury burmote rolls passim; chamberlains’ accts. passim; Statutes, iii. 79, 112.
  • 4. Freemen of Canterbury, ed. Cowper, coll. 262; Canterbury burmote orders; chamberlains’ accts. 1509-10; HMC 9th Rep. pt. 1, pp. 174-5.
  • 5. CPR, 1494-1509, pp. 546, 580; LP Hen. VIII, i; Canterbury chamberlains’ accts. 1515-16; burmote rolls passim.