Family and Education

Offices Held

Bailiff, Wallingford Mich. 1420-1, 1430-1; alderman 1431-2, 1436-7, 1440-1, 1446-7; mayor 1438-9.1

Biography

The first notice of Dalgate occurs in 1408, when he stood surety with William Clowd* for one Nicholas atte Field. Between then and 1447 he witnessed a very large number of local deeds, being at first referred to as a chapman and later as a mercer.2 He possessed considerable property within the borough (principally in the parish of St. Peter, where it centred on a messuage called ‘Frobbings’), and also acquired land in the neighbouring village of Crowmarsh Giffard.3

A frequent office-holder in Wallingford, Dalgate witnessed, sometimes in an official capacity, the elections for the borough to the Parliaments of 1421, 1429, 1431, 1432, 1433, 1435, 1437 and 1442. In 1439 it fell to him as mayor to ‘surrender’ Wallingford to the earl of Suffolk, after a commission of inquiry headed by the latter had concluded that it could no longer afford to pay the royal fee farm, and it was he who received back the borough liberties when a lower farm was agreed. He probably died soon after 1447.4

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: Charles Kightly

Notes

• 1. Boarstall Cart. (Oxf. Hist. Soc. lxxxviii), nos. 811, 819; C219/12/5, 14/2; Bodl. Ch. Berks. 137; Berks. RO, W/RTb/102-4, W/TLa/14.
• 2. CCR, 1405-9, p. 377; Boarstall Cart. nos. 809, 818, 827; Bodl. Ch. Berks. 136.
• 3. Boarstall Cart. nos. 833-5, 838, 840, 842; CP25(1)191/27/9. He headed the list of Wallingford householders in 1438; C145/307/5.
• 4. C219/12/5, 6, 14/1-5, 15/1, 2; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 360-1; C145/307/5.